Perennial Rose
by Keeper of Tomes
Summary: A story of redemption, beauty, and above all, love. You lose yourself to yourself, only to find it within another. You discover beauty where you least expected it. The exploration of seven characters, revolving around the rose that blooms forever.
1. land on truth

Firstly, don't kill me. I've decided to set the Gray Between down for a bit and let it settle. You know, until I feel up to it. So, to keep you all pleased, I'm starting the new story a bit early. Obviously, the title is Perennial Rose, as decided by my faithful poll goers. And I'm trying something new. There will be twelve chapters, one for each month of a year long plot. It will explore the relationships between humans and each other, and the effect of nature upon said relationships.

And it will be different, I promise you. And now, I present...

* * *

**PERENNIAL ROSE**

**Part One: Spring**

_1. Bloody Sunday_

The dawn was splattered with blood.

Remember that.

It was not _old _blood, mind you. It hadn't chalked over and begun to smell of half dried paint yet. You could still touch it and walk away with red fingertips. Not that you would want to touch it. It smells horrible, fresh and sweet, intoxicating and addicting, like poisonous beauty. And it stains not just the skin, but the heart. You can rinse off the color, but never the feeling.

It had been recently spilt. The clouds bumped against each other in a rush to get away from it. It hovered around the sun like a smoggy curtain that refused to open. Normally, sunrises are streaked with color; today, it was overwhelmed. Color overload. The normal, dusty gray and pink of morning did not appear. It was red as an opened vein, red as the rosy lips of a lover, red as hell.

So the curly petals of the poisonous dawn unfurled.

...

"And you call me your _friend_!"

"I never called you that."

"Touché."

She doesn't like him. He gets on her nerves. He makes her jump up in the air and want to rip her hair out.

"Piper, I'm sorry."

"Sorry doesn't cut it!" She knows she shouldn't be this mad, but she is. She knows he didn't mean to make her upset, but she is. She knows she shouldn't snap at him, but she _does_. And that's what hurts the most. For both of them. It's not a game any longer. Piper closes the door on him and watches it slam shut. It's not particularly satisfying, but she pretends it is.

Maybe she's being silly. She's never silly. Finn frowns and turns away from the door. "I think she's PMS-ing," he says to a silent Radarr, who tries to understand the meaning of the phrase...PMS. Someone pokes their head 'round the corner and sighs in a rather disappointed manner.

"You _did _blow up her lab," Aerrow says, shaking his head. "She has a right to be angry."

"She doesn't have to rip my throat out," Finn mumbles, his voice weighed down and heavy. "And I apologized."

"You know Piper. Give her a few hours and she'll be fine. I promise."

"Says you, Sky Knight."

Aerrow pretended not to hear. Which wasn't hard.

...

Sometimes, you try to realize what the meaning of the word "good" is. And you then end up realizing a whole bunch of other things along the way. All except your original realization goal: what does "good" mean?

It means an awful lot of things, really.

It means kindness, which is an abstract notion to begin with. We all sort of associate that word with rescuing drowning insects and saving kittens from high up tree branches, or helping the little old lady down the lane with her groceries. I suppose "good" can also be associated with purity, and all things right, and when you do good, you are making the world a better place.

Good is also a compliment. "Did I do good?" "Yeah, you did good."

But good is no black and white matter. What is good depends on the eyes of the beholder. No one, not even nature, is purely good. We all have a dark side. We all have hearts. The question is, what will we fill those hearts _with_?

See? I told you so. We have realized many things. Except for what "good" really is. In the words of some famous dead guy, the work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with.

To suit our purposes: The philosophy never really amounts to what you thought you could philosophize. So in the end, we're all just wannabees. Isn't that a joyful thought?

So when I say the day was good, really, I mean the day was many things. It was a Sunday, for one. The first Sunday of March. It was also spring. It was warm, but not uncomfortably so. It was also cool, but not uncomfortably so, either. It was a mediocre day. It was a good day.

But I say good now. By good, I mean that this is the first brick to fall in a long succession of falling bricks. A journey of ten thousand miles begins with one step. The banishment of a million falsehoods begins with the banishment of one. By good, I mean that the people involved in this very good day, would not realize the magnitude of its goodness until many, many months later. Perhaps a lifetime.

If there's one thing that's certain in this world, it's that nothing is certain.

...

Her body was bent over in a graceful sideways, open end down C shape. She had escaped from the confines of her self-inflicted banishment to the comfort of the bridge, even if it meant looking upon Finn's ugly mug again. He smiled winningly and attempted to make her do the same, but only received a hurtful glare for his troubles. Stork and Junko were looking over a faulty pipe with interest; in reality, they were just trying to stay out of the mess.

Intelligence is not a matter of IQ, but of knowing when to quit. And the Merb and the Wallop were doing just that: quitting. They knew when the situation was hopeless. By dinnertime, Piper would be herself again.

She was tracing the trading routes with an ink-stained fingernail, almost like a parent would trace the contours of their child's face. The tilts of the eyes, the warmth of the cheek. Piper felt the smoothness of the paper and the silky ink. Someone breathed on her neck. His breath smelled like sand cakes.

"Hello, Radarr," she mumbled. Sure enough, the padded hands of the little whatever-he-is pressed against her shoulder. She could feel his gaze penetrating her head.

"There you are, buddy." The weight was gone. She looked up to see Aerrow. It was _his _shoulder Radarr had taken up residence in.

"Hey," she said, smiling. He watched her eyes light up and knew that she'd be fine. And it wasn't even quite ten o' clock, yet. He hadn't even eaten lunch. It was astounding.

"Hey yourself," he said back, and he leaned over the map as well. "How far are we?"

"Not far. We'll be passing by Vale pretty soon." Her finger landed on an extremely large terra towards the south. "It should be smooth flying."

All of a sudden, Stork whirled around and dashed over to the table, jerking the map away. "V-Vale? Did you say Terra _Vale_?"

"Yes."

"We need to change course. NOW!!" His eyes bugged out of their sockets as he grabbed Piper by the collar and shook her violently.

She eased him off of her and smoothed out her shirt. "Stork, there's nothing to worry about. The fastest way to Tropica is via Terra Vale. I can't believe I didn't think of this route before," she said, shrugging.

"Yeah. You're usually so smarticle," Finn said sourly. She shot him a dirty look as Stork continued.

"Terra Vale is famous for its...mysterious magic. Once you land, you don't get up! No one's lived there for centuries. It's supposed to be...cursed." He twitched. "I'm changing course," he said promptly, before heading to the controls. Aerrow shrugged, causing Radarr to cling on for dear life.

"Cursed?" Junko asked, his eyes getting wide. "Oh, that's bad. Yeah, um, let's go a different way. Maybe Stork's right."

"Finally, someone who's smart," Stork mumbled. "Wait. That...didn't make sense. Junko's normally such a scatter-brain..."

"Whatever. We'll just get there a few days later," Piper said, glancing at Finn. She was counting on him to do what he did best: whine.

"WHAT?" he howled. _Right on cue, _Piper thought, smiling in spite of herself. "We can't do that! By the time we get there, spring break'll be over! All the hot chicks will be back in school! We have to take the shortcut!"

"If there's one thing I detest more than _YOU, _Finn, it's SHORTCUTS!" Stork barked. With that, he began to bank away from the terra they were just beginning to spot through the front window.

Suddenly, the alarms began to ring. Red light flashed across the bridge like fire. Stork smacked his forehead with a green tinged hand and moaned. "Why does this always happen to _me_?"

...

Life is a whirlwind of what-ifs.

What if I hadn't gone to that dark alley late at night jangling the many coins in my pocket? What if I hadn't handled raw meat and then gone to pet the giant, hungry tiger? What if I hadn't forgotten to put on my pants that day of the job interview?  
So many what-ifs.

What if the Cyclonians hadn't attacked that Sunday? What if they hadn't won? What if the Condor hadn't plummeted onto Vale in a fiery plume of smoke and ash and burning metal?

I just ruined the ending of this chapter, I suppose. But I don't believe in foreshadowing or eluding or beating 'round the bush. I'm not a story writer, I am a story _teller_. And let me tell you, there is no such thing as an ending. There are beginnings, but there are no endings. Think of it this way: You are born. Before you are born, you are inside your mother's womb. Before that, you are a tiny egg. Before that, you are nothing. Imagine that. You. Are. Nothing. In a world where the one person who matters most to many people is "I", the idea that you were once nothing, not even an idea, is rather chilling, is it not?

But after you are born, people will say, "Oh, that was the end of a very long pregnancy!" But it's also the beginning of the rest of your life! Something cannot be both an ending and a beginning, can it? If that were the case, every second would be an ending. Every second would be a beginning.

The world never began and it will never end. It will always _be_. And it is my solemn duty as a story teller to tell you a little piece of that being that neither began, nor ended.

The dawn was splattered with blood.

Sound familiar?

They were not the first words of this story. The first words, not even I know. Nor do you. You _do_ know the last words, however. I don't. You do. Don't go scrolling to the last chapter. After you finish this story, look into your heart. There lie the last words.

...

So as I already said, the alarm-setter-offers were indeed, the Cyclonians. More specifically, Dark Ace, terror of the skies to all but six. Make that five; Stork is still pretty terrified at the mention of him. Perhaps even four; Junko's knees still tend to lock up when he sees the Talon commander.

They came with two battleships. Obviously, someone had tipped them off on the Storm Hawk's whereabouts, and rather than risk the mission with Ravess or Snipe, the Master had sent her right hand man. He was grinning at his teenage nemeses from his ride. Grinning like a shark. He showed his teeth when he smiled. His red gloved hand gripped a sword that winked in the mid-morning light. It was almost eleven, and the sun was almost halfway up in the sky. It arched towards the ceiling of the world in its daily routine.

Aerrow and Radarr settled onto their ride and were waiting for the others.

"Are you coming?" he asked Piper.

"Nah. I'll stay and keep Stork...relatively calm."

"You mean you'll stay and _try _to keep Stork calm." Aerrow placed a steadying hand on her shoulder and looked into her eyes.

"Be careful." She beat him to the punch with her words. He nodded and took his hand back, before revving the engine and taking off, into the golden blue sky. Then Finn, who didn't leave without throwing her a customary raspberry. She felt like flicking him off, but didn't. Finally, Junko lumbered away with his skimmer laden with bombs, and faded into a cloud, streaming after the others.

I suppose you know what happens next, don't you? If you don't, something's wrong. Go and watch some episodes. Then come back. Maybe then you'll get it.

The battle was not any different from the others. It was just one small thing that threw the entire shebang out of whack. Something you must always remember when you get in a car to go on a road trip is gas. Same thing with skimmers. You need crystals.

And Aerrow, I am sorry to tell you, had no crystals.

Which turned out to be a bit of a problem. Need I say more?

...

"Piper, come in, Piper, come in."

"Aerrow? What is it?"

"I'm out of fuel. I repeat, I am out. Of. Fuel."

She set the mouthpiece down and looked through the periscope. Aerrow was sitting on the seat of his ride and waving frantically, then pointing at the fuel gauge with one of his blades. Flying at him full speed was the Dark Ace himself, and Aerrow had no choice but to turn around and continue his duel. Piper chewed on her lip. Going out there with a box full of unstable fuel crystals during the middle of a heated battle was no option. But neither was letting him fall.

"Stork. Blast Dark Ace."

"What?"

"Just blast him."

Stork turned the Condor, swinging it away from the other ships. It seemed to trail silver across the blue sky, and then it belched blue. The ball of energy whammed into the Switchblade and ripped the wings off of its left side. He jumped off and his jet wings sprang open, caught the sky, and pulled him upwards. Aerrow turned and shot Piper a quick thumbs-up, then began to fly for the Condor again.

The battle had moved directly over Vale, by now. Stork was moaning and groaning.

"Oh, this is bad. This is _very, _very bad. No one gets off of Vale. You better hope they don't hit our engines."

Suddenly, there was a BOOM! and a cloud of smoke following.

"They've hit our engines!"

"I spoke too soon."

...

When the Dark Ace fell, it seemed to happen in slow motion, as if it was a movie.

Aerrow grinned as his wings sprang open. The man looped upwards, somehow still clinging to his sword. Aerrow turned his ride back to the Condor to refuel. He didn't see the Talon commander loop for his own ship and give the command to fire for the Condor. He didn't see the big, red blast tear a five foot wide hole in the Condor's side, knocking out the engines. And he most definitely didn't see the smaller blast that whammed into his back, sending him towards ground.

Personal experience told him that this would hurt.

It hurt.

The ground...hurts.

A lot.

Really.

There was a whamming sound of bones banging against each other, but nothing cracked, and that was a blessing in and of itself. He ached all over, but nothing seemed to be broken. His first thought was, "Radarr!" And then there was the sound of breaking metal, and a tiny chirp. He pulled himself up to see Radarr, sitting atop his skimmer. Or what _was _his skimmer. He sighed and rubbed his sore joints, then looked up to see a tiny problem. Forget tiny, HUGE. The Condor was falling, its tail on fire, red flames licking the metal, enveloping the blue hawk that once soared unhampered. In the distance, there was the whirring flash of Heliblades, and he could just make out Piper and Stork. Stork was screaming, as usual.

The Cyclonians, their mission accomplished, were turning back to the north. Heading home. No doubt Dark Ace was sitting smug in one of those battleships, a wicked little grin on his wicked, ugly face. Aerrow sighed in relief as the others landed. First Junko, then Piper and Stork. Finally, Finn touched down shakily.

"You okay, man?" he asked, jerking Aerrow up from the ground.

"OW! I was. Up until you pulled my shoulder out of its socket, thanks." He frowned when he saw the burning pile of metal that was the Condor. Stork seemed to be on the verge of tears. "This has the potential to be very, very bad."

"You're telling me. It'll take forever! She's even worse than when we first found her!" Stork shrieked, yanking on his ears. "I NEED TO GO TO MY HAPPY PLACE!"

"First, let's put out the fire. We'll need water. Anyone?"

"I salvaged the only chart of Vale I have," Piper said, waving around a rather charred piece of paper. "Although half of it sorta...burned off." She glanced at the remaining map piece. "There's a small lake to the north of here. Junko, just head straight for those trees and you'll...Whoa."

She had looked up to see the skyline for the first time. The first thing she saw was mountain. Lots, and lots, of mountain. This terra was huge; they had landed close to the center, where there was nothing but grass and a few sparse trees. The sky was blue over this patch of earth, and the sun stroked the ground with warm fingers, enticing blades of grass to grow.

"Go, Junko." He nods and disappears over the grassy rise. She sits and feels the grass stroke her legs. It's beautiful here. She thinks she'll like it.

...

Noontime whisks by with a meal of salvaged food and water from the lake.

They put out the fire and watch the wisps of steam rise from hot metal like ghosts. Stork is silent.

The world ceases to move.

When night comes, no one is hungry. They are all staring up at the sky as it changes from golden to blue to black and white and gray.

Stars dance and sing in the darkness and quiver where they stand. It's a beautiful sight. She thinks she could wear them on her ears and let them sparkle. When they lie down to sleep, it's absolutely perfect and the world no longer cares. The world is beautiful and everything is beautiful and she is beautiful. She lies down in the grass beside her friends and closes her amber colored eyes. She thinks it can't get any better and it can't get any worse.

And she can't get any wronger.

...

_2. Rain on Monday_

When the rain came, it came quickly.

The sky was gray when they got up. They had no breakfast. She sighed and turned towards the still smoking wreckage. "We need food."

"Darn right we do." Aerrow was up, too. He had his hands on his hips and a smile on his face. A perpetual smile. He never stopped smiling. Sometimes, she wanted to smack him for that smile. The mountains etched a black outline against the gray sky. They looked like the end, but something told her that beyond them was more land. More, and more, and more. She sighed again. She sighed a lot.

She was the worrier, you know?

"I'll go and have a look," she said, starting for the woods and the mountains. She consulted her chart. Someone's hand grappled her shoulder. Jerked her back.Air rushed into her mouth.

"We can't split up," Aerrow said. "Stay here. We'll all go later."

"It'll take forever. I'll go, and you guys start patching up the ship. It's the easiest way."

"I prefer _safe _to easy." His green eyes stopped sparkling, of only for a moment. A shadow behind green frosted glass. It almost scared her. She nodded, and then he let go. Then he was gone, gone behind the wreckage. She counted to five, then started off into the wilderness.

...

Have you ever smelled stale milk? It's pretty disgusting. Stale is a polite word. _Disgusting _is a polite word. You don't want to, trust me. And then you get it on your skin, and it dries and flakes and you end up smelling like stale milk for a couple of hours. Unless you happen to have some very strong soap around. Like, automobile soap.

You'll run away from it, right? Toss it into the garbage and forget about it. Take a shower to rid yourself of the thoughts and feelings that accompany ruined milk. You might even go out and buy yourself a new one.

If only we could do that with stale memories.

If only we could do that with the bitter truth.

...

The water she walked beside laughed. It sparkled and danced in the light and teased and taunted and a million other things. She checked her chart. They were, at the moment, in Alainn Valley. She wondered who had named these places. In front of her, the Sliab Range. Tall and rocky and imposing. There was no walking around those big old men.

The sour taste of nothing lingered in her mouth and made her want to retch up even more nothing. She quickened her pace. Started up the mountain. The incline made her legs bleed pain. But she just looks down at the valley that's getting more and more distant. The Condor landed face down and will need plastic surgery. She smiles at the thought. Then laughs out loud at the notion of an ass on fire.

Hilarious. Really.

She notices a river, on the far side of the valley. It's big and blue and white all at once. She checks her chart. Allta. His name was Allta. She had already decided the river could only be a man. What with his strong and muscular arms. And the mighty roar of defiance. He would carve a canyon and then some, all for a love. Who did he love?

And then behind her, more mountains, smaller, more woody. Rustic and older. small and rounded, softer. As if you could stroke them with a large hand and come away with pine smelling fingers and the memory of soft. Glas, they were called. It suited them well. She wanted to stay and observe the graying valley forever. According to the remaining chart, a deserty place lay beyond the Sliabs, golden and bare. Not even mountains, but they were called the Mac Tire. The Wildlands, settlers had called them. She could hardly blame them.

They sounded unruly, even from a chart.

And then, again behind her, closer to where she'd left the others, bordering the edge of the terra, was one more mountain range. The Oir Mountains.

The mountains of gold. Those she had heard about. They used to hold treasures that were eventually sucked dry. And then, the men and animals who mined them were also sucked dry, sucked into their own greed, into the earth they ravaged.

Stork was right. This place was magic.

She continued up the mountain.

...

"Where's Piper?"

"I don't know."

"She ran off!"

The truth hurts.

...

Piper sits down on a rock and stares at the dark sky above her. It's a very scary sky. She decides to keep going, though. Not like she has much of a choice. Going back means Aerrow ripping her head to pieces. The wind picks up and cuts at her. She just shakes her head and keeps on going.

And then, fingers. They knock the air out of her throat and constrict her lungs. Pry her hands open and tear away the paper. It floats and twists, as if it was made to fly. She shrieks something incoherent.

It sounded like, "NO!" but I could be wrong.

And then came the rain. All she could see around her was trees, and rock. And above her, a wall of stone. She could just make out the snowcapped peaks. She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to block away the cold. She started to run, this time, running down, down, down, but her foot hit something. Something called the truth, the realization of what was. She fell, sideways, into the forest, branches whipping across her face. And then, WHAM! and something hard knocks all the breath out of her.

She's collided deftly with a big rock, and her head is in a fog. She can't see worth a damn. And then there was naught but rain. Rain on her head, rain on her shoulders, rain dripping down from her eyes. But they came not from clouds of gray; they came from orbs of amber. And the mountain wept, a wall of rock and snow and ice. It hurt all around.

Pain.

All of a sudden, her hand finds a crevasse. It's dry and warm. She needs dry and she needs warm. Her mussed up brain can tell that much. It can connect a few strands that were already kissing each other in the first place

She stumbles inside, only to realize it's already occupied. Not because she can see; she can't see a thing.

No, the occupier says something.

"If you're trying to drown yourself, the lake's _that _way." You could feel him smile from a mile away.

...

Guess who he is.

Guess.

I'm leaving you here.

Last words don't mean anything to me. If you want something meaningful, go find some idiot who'll tell you something idiotic. I'll leave you with truth:

Love is strange.

* * *

There. Two chapters in one. Sorta, kinda. Review, please. I hope you liked it. :)


	2. i swear i know your name

_3. She Was Beautiful_

The fire would not start.

She knew it.

He knew it.

He knew it, and yet he still tried. It was pretty pathetic. She watched him from the shadows and glared at him with sparkling amber eyes. He looked up and glared back. She didn't dare smile, even though she wanted to.

"What are you looking at?" he barked.

"You, trying to start a fire."

"Well, excuse me for having a broken arm."

"Hey, you said you didn't need help."

His sentence dies halfway up its throat. Three hours with this kid and he already wants to bang his head to pieces against the wall.

...

When the rainstorm dulled, there was silence.

The silence was brutal. It hurt more than the rain and the rock that had met with her head and not liked it. He had finally managed to get the fire started. She didn't know how long it had taken him. He'd been trying when she arrived. He'd tried for another three hours. The rainstorm had lasted forever.

Really, it wasn't the silence from outside. More like the silence between them. Their mouths were both clamped shut. They had a bit of a history, as you can imagine. After all, he's wanted for the attempted murder of her best friends. It's not like they're supposed to be acting all chummy.

Amazing. The birds are already singing again. Nature is quick to forgive herself. She bounces back easily, see? Because she's forever. She knows she's forever. But even something that has eternity inside her hands knows that she still has no excuse to waste time. Problem is, the two limited beings sitting inside a dark cave don't realize that. Do they?

The stone is cold on her back and her legs. And it's painful, too. There's a lump the size of a tomato on her head. Probably looks like one, too. She's watching the shadows dance from the fire. They move gracefully and effortlessly. Then she shifts her gaze to him and the clenching of his jaw. Something's wrong with his arm. It's all mussed up. There's a patch of red blood near the shoulder and a strange angle near the elbow. She worries about the elbow.

And she worries about the five she left, crouching in that godforsaken valley.

...

"We need to get down there."

"_You _need to. I'm going..." He shifts his weight uneasily. "...nowhere."

"You can die alone and cold up here, for all I care." They both know she doesn't mean it. "I'm leaving."

She slips and falls not three seconds into her..."departure."

His laugh hurts more than her broken bum. But at least the silence has been broken. That's a good thing, isn't it? Even if it means crashing onto a wet rock. As if she wasn't already wet enough.

After a frown...

Or two...

Piper's back on her feet and angrier than ever. She storms down the mountainside, dedicated to not falling. Then there's the patter of his footsteps against the soggy ground. She can't help but smile.

...

"Hello! She's gone. We can't wait for her forever."

"Stork! Are you suggesting we _abandon _her?"

"No. I'm saying we _temporarily _abandon her. That rain was the least of our troubles. The Condor will start rusting, and then where will we be?"

"In the same situation we're in now, just with rust," Finn grumbled. Radarr chirped condescendingly. Finn smirked.

Aerrow sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "Alright. Finn, Radarr, and me..." He sighed again. "...will go and look for Piper." He sighed again. "Junko, Stork, you guys stay with the Condor. Maybe she'll come back. Who knows." He sighed again. "And then-"

"Dude, you sigh one more time, and I swear, I will punch you. No joke."

"Alright, alright."

...

Climbing a mountain, like many other things, can be likened to going through life.

It starts off easy enough. It gets harder. It gets a lot harder. You discover things along the way.

You never want to do it twice.

But the mountain will end. Sort of. Perhaps the more accurate way to say this is that, eventually, the flat land will begin. And you'll step down and resume your journey. What is after life? Do we want to know? It's like flipping to the back of the book to read the final chapter before reading the others.

Problem with flipping back to read the end is that, even though the story's already been ruined, you don't understand the finale. I guess it would be the same in life. Even if we ever find out what life after death is like...or if it even exists at all...we'll be unable to understand it. Because we have not done enough living to understand dying.

Plus, ever flip to the end only to lose your current place? Wouldn't that happen in life, as well? We're so caught up in seeing beyond the walls nature put up for a reason, we lose our true meaning. The saddest human being is not one who cannot find what he is looking for, but the one who is looking for something that doesn't exist.

But hey, what do I know? I'm just a story teller who's ego is so big, she can't refrain from tossing these things of her own on in.

Going down the mountain was a good thing for those two people. It helped them know each other without saying a single word. When she turns back for the first time, he's got a strange expression on his face.

He's in pain, that much is obvious.

But she's told herself she won't care.

It's harder than it sounds, for a caring soul like her.

...

Junko throws metal around, and Stork worries.

That is the full extent of their relationship.

Junko throws metal. Stork worries.

That's as close as they get.

Generally, they don't interact. Other than Junko lugging Stork around bridal-style should the Merb need it, they have little to do with each other. So imagine their boredom when they end up being left behind to "guard the Condor." Stork doesn't mind. Junko does.

"I never get to do anything," he huffs.

"Be glad. It's a dangerous world out there." Stork puts another bolt where it should have been.

"You think everything's dangerous."

Stork pauses, then tosses the wrench aside. "Look. If you want to leave, then leave. I'll stay here-"

"...alone..."

"...alone." Stork pauses. He doesn't like that word: alone. He dreads it. Alone is when the bad things happen. So when Junko begins to lumber after the others, he does not hesitate to lumber after Junko. It was inevitable.

...

She and he were standing side by side and staring at the very big smoking hunk of metal. She and he were staring at it so hard, it was a surprise it didn't catch fire again. It had landed, as I said, face first. With its ass on fire. She said so. He sniggered.

She would have slapped him but didn't.

"They're not here," she said after a long silence. The air broke and shattered at their feet.

"I noticed."

"I'm glad you noticed."

He winced before answering. "I'm glad, too." She tilted her head to one side in concern. There was no use hiding it, it just happened. She told him maybe he should sit down, rest a while, while she tried to find a first aid kit. He does sit down and she begins to walk away, but not before he asks her a quick question, because he's a probing soul.

"Why are you doing this?"

She pauses and says nothing. She doesn't have to. He already knows the answer.

The answer is silence.

...

After the rain, the world looks new again. All sins are washed away. The grass will grow greener, the trees will sling water to the ground when the wind blows, and everything will look bright and clean. Then, a few days later, you'll poke your head out into the big wide world and realize nothing's changed. It's as brutal as ever. Times change, and people stay behind.

It's like war, really. The battle's over and the world looks new again. You see it through new eyes. You realize you're lucky to be alive, unless you're dead, in which case you realize nothing. You'll think, "Gee. I've taken so many things for granted." You'll make resolutions, promises to yourself. Empty promises. Humans! We aren't as strong as we like to think we are. Eventually, we'll snap back into that horrible routine. It's a little sad.

War kills everyone. Even those whose hearts continue to beat and lungs continue to breathe. There are some whose physical bodies are gone. Their souls are taken away. But they are the lucky ones. Those who are unlucky lose their souls and keep their shells. They walk around, broken.

It takes something powerful to put them in that state. It takes something equally powerful to shock them out of it.

You can't put a soul back. But you can replace it with a new one. You can _make _a new one.

You can put love into a shell and make it feel again.

...

The evening was broken into three parts.

One: Pain.

Two: Anger.

Three: Realization.

But part three comes much, much, later. It comes after the evening, when the dawn arrives. I just can't bear to stop at two. Two is a lonely number.

It begs for three like a lonely shell begging for a soul.

...

Part one. Enter the girl with amber eyes. Piper.

"I can't believe they've gone." She's looking over his shoulder. "I think it's just dislocated. Maybe I could pop it back into the socket."

He doesn't say a word. Just blinks once, very slowly. She takes that to mean he's fine with whatever she says. She sighs and stares at him a moment longer. "Ready?"

"Whatever."

_Shhhh-thong-k!_

Then comes a stream of words I don't think I need to write down. You can guess. I know, I know, it doesn't make me a very good storyteller. But one must have priorities.

When she's done, and he's wiping the sweat off of his brow, she rolls up his sleeve and sees the cause of the large blot of blood. His elbow is still bent at an odd angle. Maybe it's broken, maybe it isn't. Where are Stork's X-ray Peepers when you need them?

Cleaning up the skin wound is harder than popping his shoulder back into place. He won't sit still. He keeps on flinching and jerking away. She doesn't dare scold him. Even without his sword, even with a busted arm, he could choke her until her breath is gone and faded into the air, along with the rest of the squeezed out breaths. It's her turn to ask a question.

"Why haven't you killed me?"

"Why would I kill the one thing that can get me off of this terra?"

"What if it hadn't been me? What if it had been...Aerrow?"

"Then I'd have wrung his filthy neck and left him to rot in that cave." He glares at her. "Any more questions?"

She so wants to say no.

"Yes."

"Oh, lord." She wipes away all the blood and slaps on the gauze. She may be kind, but she's also human. She knows how to be mean. Piper. Someone...or rather, something...in the back of her mind, keeps telling her to leave him here. He'd run after her, for sure, but he doesn't know this terra. Not like she does. He hasn't seen the map. Or so she thinks. "Ask, then." He jolts her from her thoughts.

"I am grateful, I suppose, that you haven't killed me. But I don't expect you to like me, either. Just...After this is all over. Will you go back to trying to kill us all again?"

"Look girl." He answers quick. "I've got no bone to pick with you. My quarrel is with your commanding officer. If you happen to get in the way..." His shrug says everything. "Well, I'm a soldier. I do what I need to do."

"You're a killer," she spits, before she can stop herself. Then, she grabs his arm and jolts the bone back into place.

"AAAAH!"

She likes the scream.

The scream is good.

...

Part two. Enter the man with a splinted arm. Dark Ace.

He's annoyed. "I shouldn't have let you in my cave," he grumbles.

"It wasn't _yours_."

"Squatter's rights. Finders keepers." He looks at his patched up arm and grimaces.

"If I hadn't gone in there, you'd still be lying on a cold cave floor with nothing but a horribly made fire to keep you company. I suppose you'd die proud, though."

He groans softly. She still can't help but pity him. It's just her nature. You can't do anything about your nature.

Part two is pretty short. Part two lasts for a few tiny moments. They're angry because they're scared. Even him, the Dark Ace. He's scared of a young lady sitting on front of him with blood on her dark tinted fingertips. His blood.

...

Part three comes late. It comes after a very long intermission.

Part three. Enter the truth.

She stands and he stands and they say nothing. She just leads him down the hill and into the sea of grass that is so beautiful to walk in. It tickles her bare shoulders, that's how tall it is. Strokes her chin like the finger of a parent, praising his daughter. "You did good." It'll never happen, but she can dream. She's looking for her family, her friends. He's following her because she's his way out of here.

The truth is this: He needs her. She doesn't need him. She _wants _him. Piper _wants _him to follow her. She wants the company, and she wants something else that not even she knows.

When night falls and the others are still nowhere to be found, _she _starts a fire with her staff, which she always keeps tucked behind her belt. He doesn't say a word. She doesn't say a word. Dark Ace is silent, Piper is silent. But nature doesn't need words. To her, it's just two human beings who lie side by side in the tall grass, so near yet so distant, their hearts miles apart. Two stupid humans.

Humans are stupid, and humans are blind.

She was beautiful. He saw it in the cave and he sees it now. She's a pretty girl. More than pretty, she's exquisite. But beyond those perfect eyes is a soul he's only beginning to comprehend. He goes to sleep thinking about how this is going to end.

...

_4. When the Stars Die_

When the stars die, they go to heaven. They are the epitome of innocence.

When the stars die, they die in a burst of beautiful flame. They disappear and their pieces become the universe.

When people die, they go to heaven and hell. Some go to one, some go to the other. Actually, this is figuratively speaking. Like I said before: We don't know what's after the after. There are walls for a reason, you know? No, I just mean that humans are a little more diverse than stars. We come from all walks of life and all corners of the sky.

We don't get along. It's only natural.

The natural sequence to an unnatural beginning, as someone once put it. Sometimes we forget who we are, and that's never good.

...

Three days after their chance encounter in a mountain, they were still searching. Well, she was. He could care less. April was calling out to March. They were beginning to meet each other. It was a blustery morning. The wind tore at voices and made them speak, regardless of their own personal wills.

The silence was swollen, bulging, ready to overflow into emptiness.

Words lingered at cracked and dry lips, words that begged to be spoken.

Two begs for three, shells beg for souls, and hearts beg for love. Words beg for sentences. Sentences long to fly through the air and meet ears. We all want something. Even those we don't think can yearn, do yearn. She yearned to tell him he wasn't forgiven, even though he already sort of...was. He yearned to scowl. But he didn't scowl. He kept his face a picture of nothing. Blank canvas.

Blank canvases long for paint.

She'd paint something on that canvas.

...

The thing about Vale is that it's tragically beautiful. Beautiful because, hey. It's vast and green and the sky is bluer than you could possibly have ever imagined blue to be. Tragic because it was once even more glamorous. She's like the showgirl who has lost a tad of her charm from being hurt too much.

No one walks on her surface. Not for hundreds of years. She's home to some birds and a squirrel or two. Home to a few fish and the green that gathers at the surface of still water. Home to trees and grass and dirt and rock. Bushes. Stones. Snow.

No humans.

They took her heart and dashed it to the ground.

They tore out her gold and her crystals and raked up her land.

In a phrase, they stole her soul and left her empty.

It hurts to be deceived. Vale knows what it means. Her rivers carry memories of poison and dams. Her mountain caves echo with the pangs of every pickaxe and ton of dynamite. Her earth still bleeds. When you kill the land, it doesn't grow back. It stays dead forever. Nothing there grows without first realizing that it grows in blood. When Piper and Dark Ace strode through the meadow, they didn't think that maybe, beneath their feet, were bodies.

I don't believe in ghosts, but in the case of dying hearts, maybe they do come back.

Not to haunt...to remind.

...

"They could be looking for _us_, you know," she suggested. Five days. Five days of eating berries and drinking water. It was getting painfully painful.

And the silence. That hurt, too.

"Looking for you, maybe. They probably think I'm safe at home, right now." He looks at his arm. It still hurts. But not as much. It was very early in the morning. The sky was rosy and the stars were heading to bed. But the sun was a late riser; he wasn't quite up yet. Stretching. But then he'll toss his head back into his pillow and moan. "Five more minutes."

This is part infinity. It lasts forever. Enter the world.

Enter the dawn. And this dawn was not splattered with blood. No, this dawn was a knife. It cut into the souls of two figures, sitting on a rotting log, staring at the sky and hating yet appreciating the person beside them. She wouldn't abandon him. She would never forgive herself if she did. She knew he was just using her to get off of this terra. But Piper being Piper, she can't bring herself to shake him off.

He doesn't want to be with her. He doesn't like her. She may have patched up his arm, but she can't patch up his heart. She can't change him. No one can.

The knife pulls out and wipes itself on the clouds. Turns them red. They soak it up like sponges, eagerly, hungrily.

And the stars, they go to sleep, to wake up another night and wash the sky with silver.

...

When the stars die, they go to heaven. Because they do.

They get along pretty damn well. They stand side by side for millions of years and never squabble.

We can't even stand side by side for five days without hating each other. It's true for me and it's true for Piper and Dark Ace. They don't like each other, but they don't want to let go either. It's human nature.

Human nature is something irreversible. I guess you just go with the flow and hope for the best. Especially when it comes to hating. And loving.

Don't forget loving.


	3. and the desert was still

Songs: Brandi Carlile: Throw it All Away, Death Cab for Cutie: Transatlanticism

I keep forgetting to mention a large part of my stylistic inspiration comes from Markus Zusak's book, "I Am the Messanger."

* * *

_5. Moonrise over Gold_

There is, as most people will tell you, a time for everything.

There's a time for joy, a time for love, a time for sadness, a time for anger. When the parts of the play are jumbled up, the words garble-de-gooked, and the entrances funked, the entire thing falls apart. A shambles. A disaster.

There are parts we are not meant to play. When we think of ourselves as one thing, when we are really another, then we are lying. Not to the world, but to our own selves. Take, for example, the Dark Ace.

Who thinks.

He is.

Impenetrable.

The brick wall may hold up to the wind, but a single seed of ivy, planted at its base, will eventually strangle, tear apart, and crush to dust the stone and mortar.

The thing about self-created images is that they tend to be slightly...biased. We, as Aesop once said, often carry our own faults behind us and those of our neighbors in front. I suppose it's only natural. This storyteller realizes that some people are less modest than others. The Dark Ace, no doubt, was one of those who probably tucked his own faults away entirely.

But it's like what they say in the AA: (Alcoholics Anonymous,) The first step to fixing the problem, is admitting you have it. The blind person who says they can still see will not be permitted a seeing-eye dog. The handicap who swears they can walk will not be given a wheelchair. And the man who swears he cannot be changed _will _not be changed. Not willingly. Sometimes, it takes another person with the exact same faults as yours to realize you have them in the first place. It's like looking into a mirror, and seeing your heart for the first time.

Piper, too, believes she does not need changing. She's a stubborn soul. In that respect, she and her companion are extremely similar. She's not as distant as he is, but deep inside, she believes she's as close to perfect as she can get. And so does he.

It takes one to know one, I suppose.

...

"So, what, were, you, kids doing, here, exactly?"

The words come out rather disjointed because they're moving uphill. She replies in a similarly disjointed manner.

"We were, on our way, to Tropica." She sounds remotely disgusted.

"Why exactly were you on your way to Tropica?" The words flow now, because he's stopped and sat down on a rock. Piper frowns and turns, then sits down next to him.

"Vacation."

No breath wasted. The leaves above rustle quietly. They are amused, to say the least. Their music sounds like soft laughter.

"And why were you on vacation?" he wants to know.

"I don't know; it wasn't my idea," she says briskly, her head held high. She has some pride left.

"Tell me," he says, laughing softly, like the leaves above. "What's Tropica like?" Obviously, he's never been there. She spends a moment wondering how a human's voice could sound like ripe, green leaves, but it does. Windy, hollow, and hauntingly beautiful.

"It's not all its cracked up to be, trust me," she grumbles. Her voice is as scratchy as the dry old rock they're sitting upon. "Just a bunch of skimpy girls with big busts winking at boys. Or fat, rich women, lying on the beach, showing off their beefy thighs." She shudders.

He laughs again. She's never heard him laugh this way, with his mind clear and his emotions bared. He's truly happy, not like that silly show he puts on during hours of battle. She wonders how he does it. Piper.

Wonders how the Dark Ace works.

"And what do _you_ do?" he asks. It sounds a little provacative; she shies in the opposite direction and looks rather offended.

"What do mean, what do I _do_?" she growls, glaring him down with deep pools of amber.

"I mean," he says, chortling again, "While the others are doing things you don't approve of. Do you run around like their mother or something?"

Actually, he's not far from the truth, but she won't give him that satisfaction. "I study charts or read. Mostly, I'm inside the ship by myself. Or I watch Finn wipe out while he's surfing." It's her turn to laugh. She sounds more like water, the giggle of a stream while it jumps over rocks, and it's lovely.

But he looks almost disappointed. Outraged, even. "You _read_? Even on vacation, you're not on vacation. I find that a little absurd. You need to let go and take in the sun, sometimes."

She stands and her frown returns. But only because he's right. "Oh, and I suppose you ask Master Cyclonis for vacations all the time," she says, sarcasm dripping off of her tongue with the ease of molten butter.

Now it's his turn to stand and frown. She's right, too. "Well, it's different for _me_. I've got a bit of a life and death thing going on here. She'd kill me!"

"Oh. The big, tall man is scared of the fourteen year old kid with anger management issues. Just throw her over your goddamn knee and give her a good _spanking_!"

"I _would_, if I didn't know what loyalty was. Clearly, _you _don't."

"Says the idiot who killed his own squad."

All of a sudden, his jaw snaps back into place, and his neck muscles tighten up. She regrets saying it so much, it hurts, but the fragile string, the delicate line that his strung itself between them is being tested, and he turns to one side, as if he's been slapped by her words. Then he storms up the mountain, his breathing harsh and measured. She reluctantly follows him, shouting, "I'm sorry! I didn't mean it like that!"

But his laughter, like the leaves above her, is silent, and she can do nothing but walk on, a mirage of pain in front of her.

...

He spies a dark, half oval hole above them, some old abandoned mine shaft that had been pounded through the mountain. Seeing as they've searched the entire valley, forest included, the others must be over the wall of stone. The Sliabs, she calls them. He wonders where she came up with a name like that. It suits them well. Tall and bold and absolutely grand.

She somehow inches past him to the front. She's thought what he's thought, and wants to see what the other side is like. Where the chart ends. That's where she longs to go. Empty spaces on maps cast dark shadows in her. It's a little sad, as if a part of Piper's soul is taken away when she sees blankness. Entering the cool and slickness of the mine shaft, her feet find the old rotten wood and rusted steel of a track. She could hear the ancient pickaxes drilling, the booms of dynamite, the shouts of men as they discovered gold or crystals. Beautiful yet painful memories of a haunted mountain.

The stones in the mountain sang. The dripping water was their metronome, the howling wind the accompanying flutist, who whistled between the rocks and gave birth to melodies abound. The stones in the mountain sang.

They had beautiful voices.

But they sang dark, dark, things.

_Seasons come, seasons go, leaves, grass, ice, snow, You will come, and you will go, gone with the leaves, gone with the snow..._

_You live, you die, why should we care? You're trapped, you're trapped, deep inside here. You live, you die, and we will stare. You'll drown in dark, beneath our glare... _Piper hears the sollemn words, the taunting hiss and echo.

And then the water.

_Plip, plop, plippity-plop, plip..._

What stories could this mountain tell?

...

The creek is light and shallow, rocky, bumpy, and indecisive. Reckless, young, and sprighty, it will not cease to jump until it has met the roaring river, and finally, the peace of the ocean.

The sea is calm at its center, although the edges may be flaky and crisp, crashing against the hard banks of a cruel world. Unpredictable to say the least, violent at times, brutal, murderous, it is deep and mysterious, and it is eternal. For although the creek, constantly moving, constantly on the run, seems far more innocent and sprightly, it is thin, and it is shallow, and it will eventually dry up. But the ocean, it is forever.

These two things can be likened to friendships, lovers, any kind of special relationship. The faster it moves, the shallower it seems, the shorter it will last. The fire that burns brightest goes out fastest. You will want your relationships to last forever, to be eternal, to be as deep as the ocean. Or like the oak tree, whose roots dig deep into the earth, while his branches spread to all parts of the sky. Not like the mold spore that dances from place to place, loathe to settle down.

The ocean that takes eons to form is stronger than a thousand creeks. That is how it is, and that is how it always will be.

The friendships that take ages to strengthen are the ones that will last forever. They are the ones that blossom into more.

...

As they walked up the slippery mine shaft, the tune of the stones changed.

_Time is off the essence,_ was all they chirped. So Dark Ace and Piper moved faster. They had, in some respects, gotten the message right. It had, indeed, meant for them to move faster. But not the feet. One can more the feet as fast as they wish; if their heart is left behind, they will get nowhere. No, perhaps what the stones in the mountain meant to say was, _Move your hearts faster. The feet can stay in one place, but if the heart soars, then you shall travel miles...Miles...Miles..._

And the darkness, it was beautiful. In it, she could hear his breathing, could hear the movement of his feet, could hear the soft rustle of his armor against his clothes as he walked.

She turned and held out a hand; in the dark, she couldn't see a thing. Eventually, the cold metal of his chestplate hit her palm. He stopped.

Piper could feel his heart beat. "I'm sorry," she said. "Really, I am. I wish you could see me right now. I swear."

There's a long silence. But she can feel his gaze on her, can feel his presence. "I know." And that's all he says. Then, it's the warmth of his hand on her wrist, pulling her fingers away from him, and giving them back to her. The string is strong, and it will hold for another day. He follows her down the shaft, and soon, they round a corner to see the golden glow of daylight. She began to move even faster, stumbling, falling. Blood ran down her knees; her pants were torn and so was the skin.

But she was tired of not seeing him, and she needed to know she was forgiven.

She lurched out into the open, and her feet found no ground. Nothing but air. She was suspended, flying, ready to fall...

And then someone grabbed her shoulder and jerked her back inside. A rush of air entered her head and knocked the breath out of her, replacing it with dark and with fear. Adrenaline pumped through her veins. He turned her around, and in the pale light, she could see the frustration in his eyes. He had one arm on her shoulder and the other grabbed her wrist with a force so strong she worried for her bones.

"Hey," he growled, his face inches from hers. "We look before we leap. Who knows? Next time, I might..._miss_."

She's forgiven. She sees it.

Piper nods.

...

The world into which she had so stupidly stumbled was the exact opposite from the one they had come _from_. While the valley had been a lush wheel of green and blue and brown, here, it was gold, gray, charcoal, copper, and turqoise. It was a desert, after all, the Mac Tire, as the chart had said. Beautiful, yet savage, and strangely tantalizing. It asked for footsteps. It asked to be tamed. Strange. Land doesn't usually do that...

It was late, and while the sky was still blue, it wouldn't be for long. The ledge that PIper had very nearly fallen off of was thin, but navigable. This time, he went first.

Sliding down the mountainside was rather unnerving. Her legs quivered and her arms couldn't seem to stay in place. Breaths came out short and brisk. Every breeze felt like a million hands, forcing her back, forcing her down. He looked stiff and still, his balance uncanny.

Finally, the land got up to them. He jumped down, and she slid down.

The dust rose like ghosts at their feet. Someone had walked here a long time ago, or they were the first. Either way, it was history. In the distance was a smudge of gray, and jagged shapes that looked like rooftops.

"A town, maybe?"

"Here? Not a chance." All the same, he walks towards it, and she follows diligently.

...

There is something mysterious and dangerous about the desert that draws you towards it. This one was more empowering than most: the rustic dunes, dry and stiff plants, the smell of sage filling the air... All deserts are different. They each have their own magic.

Some things are too beautiful for us to appreciate.

We think of deserts as unforgiving places...

...

It's evening. There's no cover, but the chance of rain is small. It's the cold they're worried about. The rocks have captured the day's heat, so they lean against those. Lizards have the same idea, and they curl up nearby, lungs expanding beneath rough and chalky skin. He watches out for snakes. The tell-tale rattle comes, and then there's a small squeak. Some unfortunate mouse has breathed its last.

Neither of them can sleep; the desert comes alive at night. And indeed, it has sprung open, like the dusty lids of a box. Birds peck at invisible insects, owls sneak out from cacti hollows, mice and other small mammals look about urgently as they feed. The air is filled with a smooth and glistening smell.

And then, sliding up from below the horizon, is a pale, blue orb, which dangles delicately on a pale white string. It's full tonight. The desert is gold, the moon is silver, and the sky is a sheet of bluest satin.

He falls asleep first. She stays awake and watches his chest rise and fall for a few minutes. Wonders what he's dreaming about, or if he dreams at all. The night envelops her like a blanket. She curls up beneath it, her head resting on a pillow of stone. When the sleep does come, it's beautiful, and it fills her up with light.

...

_6. Test the Waters_

Dawn broke.

Quite literally.

It snapped apart into a thousand pieces, and they fell to the desert's feet like glass. Splintering, breaking, till they were fine pieces of red and gold powder. The sound of a shattering woke the two humans, and sweat trickled down the sides of their faces.

"You hear that?"

"Yeah."

...

Walking towards the town. He was still in front. She breathed in his dust and changed positions.

The wind wound through her hair. Momentary relief. This desert wasn't scorching hot. It just felt barren and stiff. And she felt small and insignificant. The sky so blue, it was unearthly. Strands of cottony clouds drew themselves across the air, taunting the earthly beings. _You don't belong up here, _they seemed to whisper. _We do._ The sand was golden, like her eyes, like her heart, and when she stared at him, he almost seemed to mold into the landscape, just like her. But both of them knew that they were temporary, and this land was forever.

He glanced back at her. Two specks of red. Her leg brushed against a sage brush and sent something small and furry scurrying off. Brambles plucked at her clothes, and dirt entered her skinned knee. It stung. She closed her eyes and imagined the others. She wondered where they were. Aerrow's encouraging smile. She walked on. Footprints followed her.

...

They found water, eventually. A blade of trees and lushness coated the sides of the mountains, and he turned towards them smartly. Two amazingly contrasted places. The wood and the sand. She leaned back in gentle amazement before running ahead, passing him, and turning back to smile cheekily. She caught a moment of his eyes flipping upwards. She'd always be a funny little child to him. Not that she cared.

Why should she?

The water was beautiful. She cleaned her knee, then cleaned her lips, then her throat. Soon, she was sparkling inside and out. He knelt beside the stream and drank, then looked down the channel to see a glittering pool the color of turquoise. It had fingers that stretched to him and stories to tell.

...

I said before that relationships can be likened to water, to trees.

Branches that wriggle, streams that dance...Would you rather become a bramble or an oak?

Sometimes you realize that people are beautiful.

Not their faces, though. Their hearts, I guess. He looks at her and acknowledges that. She notices he hasn't even said her name out loud yet.

What she doesn't notice is that he thinks it's too good for her.

He can't hear himself saying it. It's glued to his tongue. Branded to him most painfully. Maybe, when the string is strong enough, it'll be pulled off, into the air, but until then, it's still caught inside him.

And he doesn't like it.

When she looks at him, there's caring in her eyes. He wants to slap her for it.

She didn't owe him anything, not before he rescued her in that cave. She thinks everything's a game of balances to him. Getting even, repaying debts. Some stupid honor code he follows. It's the same with Aerrow, she realizes. You're saved, you must save them. You're wounded, you must wound them.

"What will you do when we find them?" she asks.

He doesn't answer. He doesn't know.

She reads his response off of those cunning, red eyes. Then tilts her own up to the big blue sky and smiles.

* * *

**End of Part One: Spring.  
**


	4. where the air cracks

Here's summer, sorry it took so long, but the internet's been a crappy beyotch with me lately. And school's starting on Tuesday. I'm happy in an unhappy way. :()

* * *

**Part Two: Summer**

_1. The Eyes of the Sky..._

While the eyes of the sky watched them, Aerrow and Finn and Radarr watched the sky. They were climbing up the mountainside and they were growing more and more winded by the moment. Salt gathered at the orifices of their bodies and blisters clustered at their feet. The rich and beautiful smell of pine filled their nostrils; the trills of birds filled their ears. Pain filled their sense of feel. Longing filled their sense of soul.

Finn longed for a good meal, some sleep, and the golden beaches of Tropica.

Radarr longed for a banana.

Aerrow longed for Piper...

There was little time left for sunshine; night would fall soon. They'd searched the whole of the valley and found nothing, save the still smoking remains of the Condor. Junko and Stork seemed to have taken matters into their own hands...or whatever you call their appendages...and wandered into the woods. Deciding that Piper was the priority, Aerrow had jerked Finn and Radarr up the Sliabs, aiming for whatever was beyond them. But evening was coming fast, and in one of his rare bursts of reason...

"Aerrow...we have to stop. It'll become too dark to climb."

The red-head turned around with an equally red face. "Oh, fine," he grumbled at last. Searching the woody mountain for shelter, they eventually stumbled across a tiny cave that felt warm and felt safe. When the moon finally rose above the mountains, a pearl on the skin of the sky, it shimmered and winked.

Aerrow walked out into the woods while Finn and Radarr snored. He gazed across the valley and put his hands on his hips. He watched the twin moons, one in the sky above, one in the lake below. _Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will_ rang through the forest, and somewhere, the loon's haunting call echoed across the wood. Feet scurried over the fallen leaves. An owl's wise eyes drilled into him from a few yards away, and then the great wings fluttered, and it was gone. He breathed in the clean air and counted stars, before slipping back inside to allow sleep to claim him at last.

...

The sky has eyes.

You don't do anything without being seen. A million stars, glaring at you by night, Argus-eyed. Or the single orb of a sun, like a Cyclops, staring you down come daytime. Should it ever be cloudy, then the clouds will keep watch over the earth below.

Living in Atmos, where the horizon is constantly below you, rarely above, you are always under surveillance. There are no secrets here. Everything knows everything, and no one knows nothing. The obviousness of many things is at once painful, and beautiful.

It's obvious that you can't be young forever...yet we pretend you can. It's obvious that the world will not stop for you...yet you hope it _will_. It's obvious that Aerrow loves Piper, but he's not saying anything. _And they call me stupid, _Finn will often grumble.

The best things in life are always bittersweet.

...

_2. Honey_

In one of her frequent bursts of unexplained phenomena, nature made honey.

Well, she made the bees, and the bees made honey.

Honey never spoils.

_This _storyteller wonders why honey never spoils. Perhaps it has something to do with its chemical composition, in which case this storyteller will admit it's above her pay grade. Whatever that means. But in her words, honey will not spoil because it is pure. Honey is the stuff of nature; you can almost taste the flower from which it has come. If you've never licked honey off of the waxy comb, fresh from a bee's hive, then you've never tasted heaven.

Her eyes were the color of honey, and they never spoiled. Like the amber that survived millions of years, often trapping hapless insects within, her irises would forever trap him inside them. He'd die within and die happy, like the bee that dies drunk on the petals of the sweetest flower on earth.

So the next time you pour this beautiful amber into your drink, or slather it onto your toast, remember: honey is forever.

So is love.

Maybe the two are meant to be connected.

Maybe nature is trying to tell us something...

...

The air was hot and it made things shrivel away with its Midas-like touch. Only, unlike Midas, who turned his wares to gold, this pungent and hot summer day turned the grass to hay and the air to water. Wildflowers cringed from the sun and begged for shade; if you lay down and listened, you would've heard their voices whisper and plead. The thunderstorm had never happened; it had been a dream.

Finn stumbled along behind Aerrow, and Radarr stumbled along behind Finn. They stopped every few minutes to rest. The steady incline of the mountain was taking its toll on everyone. And the peak was so _bloody _far away...

There had to be something easier.

The world was awake and it was alive; hot, but alive. The ground seemed to pant and heave, every moment a painful one, every hour desperate. Night seemed too far away, and the next rain even farther. Only the creek seemed happy, and all the leaves turned downwards in envy. They curled at the edges in indignation, and would've turned green, if they weren't green already. Something else in the forest moved, other than Aerrow and his posse. A deer? A bear? The wind? It seemed to scamper.

A squirrel dashed across the earth in panic, its heartbeat racing, but no one save the squirrel heard that. Close behind it, the fiery red blur of a fox, which soon turned even redder, as the blood of another kill splattered the undergrowth.

The heartbeat stopped.

Radarr spiraled up Aerrow's leg to perch on his shoulder, quivering in fear. At least Track Beasts didn't live this far up a mountain.

The fox turned with golden eyes and red stained lips. Perhaps it was just him, but Aerrow swore he was smiling.

Smiling. And saying something.

_Nothing is forever._

...

Nothing.

Is.

Forever.

His footsteps pounded those three words into his head as he moved. The rustling of the leaves, Finn's painful panting, Radarr's whines, they all seemed to form those three brutal words. And that gory smile of the fox, embedded into his memory like some ugly painting. The pink gums and life-stained teeth flashing, the black lips and crimson fur.

A saintly cloud floated in front of the sun for a few wonderful moments, and the trio stopped.

"Aerrow, we can't climb this," were the first words out of Finn's mouth. Aerrow frowned.

"Yes we can."

"Dude, there's _snow _on the top of this thing. It'll take us _weeks_." The blond wanted to shake his friend by the shoulders, but he was too tired. Instead, he threw a rock at his foot. And missed. Lately, his aim had deteriorated; Piper had said something about how he was just getting old. _Ha-ha, real funny. _

The saintly cloud died a martyr and disintegrated; the trio stood and continued. Finn scoured the mountainside for something, anything, that would help him along; a stick for leverage, or maybe _Piper_, who was the one person who could dissuade Aerrow from this impossible quest. Then again, she was the reason for the quest in the first place. So finding her sort of proved the whole thing redundant. Whatever _that _word meant. He'd used it before; it was cool and slipped off of his tongue. Most of the words he didn't know did that. Just sort of...glided like butter.

His piercing eyes found the timberline, where the trees stopped and nothing but rock jutted up. There, perched like a god, was a dark hole, sort of like a cave. Or a tunnel. In a sudden burst of inexplicable strength, Finn dashed up to Aerrow and jerked his head towards the orifice. Aerrow smiled a sweaty smile, before clapping his friend on the shoulder. "Good work," he spluttered, before veering towards it erratically. Finn rolled his eyes and followed, something telling him that this was going to be a looooong day.

...

Everything has its advantages and its disadvantages. Even war. Even _death_. Sometimes, we are too blinded, too overwhelmed, by just the positive, or just the negative, that we lose sight of the whole.

Speaking of blindness...

Take the dark, for example. Many a time I have contemplated, (I, a meager storyteller!), what the world would be like if, for a day, everyone was deprived of eyesight. Of course, this is all theoretical; I don't literally wish for everyone to lose their eyesight. But indulge me. Imagine a day where you can't judge anyone by their cover because, frankly, you can't see it. Where all conversations must be held in the dark. Where your hands are your eyes and the rest of your senses must be pushed to their absolute limits.

You _notice _things. Like how rain on a tin roof seems to sizzle like meat on a grill. How the breathing of a person can be the greatest lullaby of all. How the stars pulse at night. The world is a beautiful place, not just in sight, but in sound, smell, touch, and so many other things. Imagine meeting a person for the first time, without your eyes for judgment. Whether we admit it or not, sight is the first thing we process, the first thought that channels through our heads, and the first indication for ourselves as to what the person will be like.

There would be so much we could realize.

So much to learn.

Both about the world...

And ourselves.

...

The tunnel was black; you couldn't see your own hand in front of you if you tried. Which all three of them did, I may assure you.

The emptiness of it. The void. An abyss. Darker than the Black Gorge, even. At least, there, you could look up and hope to see the sky. Gray and distant and thin, but the sky, nonetheless. Here, it was the same all around. Nothing, nothing, and more nothing. Nothing is forever. Nothing is the _only _thing that is forever.

And everything is never...

When light did finally appear, it was beautiful. Honey colored. They could all taste it, but Radarr saw it first. He raced ahead of the others and peered out of the opening, to see the thin ridge down which they would have to descend. He saw the golden land before him, with the charcoal smears of ancient ash and knobby bushes of sage and bramble. The sky was blue. Such a beautiful blue. It seemed to _move_.

Aerrow and Finn caught up eventually. Aerrow drowned. Finn resurfaced.

Either way, they were all caught up in the desert's mystique.

This time, Aerrow went down first, his feet slipping, eyes smarting from the sudden appearance of _light_, you know? The day may come after the night, but it comes gradually. Here, the dawn broke in an instant, blossoming in a second, blooming in a few carefully spaced moments. Finn followed, regretting it.

"Man, I'm gonna fall!"

"Don't talk nonsense."

"I'm gonna fall!"

"No, you won't."

He didn't fall, of course. They touched down on the ground. Gold rose up to fill their nostrils and make then sneeze. Radarr got the worst of it, seeing as he was the shortest. His coat was soon home to grains of dust, fleas, and just about every other infliction animals with coats have. The place filled them with its aura and raised their spirits, after all that darkness, all that night. It is darkest before the dawn, and what a dawn this was.

It was about noon when Finn spotted the brown blotch in the distance that looked like civilization. "Think anyone can ever live on this place?"

"Maybe." Aerrow turned for it, and Finn had no choice but to follow him. Radarr had scampered up his friend's shoulder, the dust on him driving him mad. He itched. He scratched. He snapped and bit with rabid fury; it looked almost scary to Finn. So he looked up and tried not to pay attention to what was going on below. So his foot decided to bring him back down by stumbling on a rock.

"OOOF!"

Aerrow whirled around in a tiny dust storm and laughed.

"If fot fuffy."

...

It was hot. Torrid. Horrible. Radarr had done away with his vest, and Aerrow and Finn wished they could do the same, but they were far too modest. "Waaaateerr..." was the word they rasped. The mountain stream seemed an age ago. An eon. A lifetime. You could live through an eon, but never a lifetime; you could die in a lifetime.

They hoped the town had a pump.

Their hopes were not fulfilled.

The trio reached the town with despair in their minds and hearts. They needed to find her. They needed to find water.

The town was small, old, and should it be described in one word, that word would be secretive. The air was arid. It seemed to crack. The old wood moaned and the gate shrieked in agony on its hinges.

A tumbleweed rolled by. The entire thing looked as though it was from some old western film Finn had rented online.

The signs read things like, "BEER. FIVE CENTS!" And then, hanging on an old hitching post, "WANTED: BILL BLUFFS, FOR THE MURDER OF THREE YOUNG RANCHERS AND THE HOLDUP OF TOWN BANK. IF FOUND, REPORT TO OFFICIALS IMMEDIATELY. DO NOT ENGAGE!!" This was underlined twice. Everything was capitalized. Someone wanted to make a statement. "REWARD FOR **VALID **INFORMATION-" They bolded the "valid" for a reason..."-200 GOLD COINS."

"That's a lot of money," Aerrow mumbled.

"I agree. 'Murder of three young ranchers.' And he looks like a madman, too."

He's got a rugged eye and an unshaved chin. His hair is long and his face is dark. You can see him with a gun pointed at a young man sniveling on the floor. The gunshot echoes through time. The fox's evil smile returns. That red-rimmed, evil little grin that will resound through the ages. Like a gunshot.

And to think. He did it to feel the crispness of cash beneath his fingers and above his palm. To feel the cold rattle of coins in his pocket and the satisfaction of counting his wares over and over, knowing he'd done it. Aerrow wondered if he'd ever been caught. What was his sentence? Another image flitted into his mind: A swaying body, darkly clothed, with a brown sack over its head, and a noose drawn tight 'bout its neck. The gallows, still and silent. The sheriff, looking grim, and the executioner, looking like nothing through his black hood and eye holes. The lever is just pulled, and the rope is still quivering. The dust still settling from the sudden dropping of the floor.

He could almost feel his own neck being wrung. The shortening of his breath. That sudden realization of death, and the erratic movements as the brain loses its oxygen. And then...

...the stillness.

And its the stillness that scares him the most.

...

_3. Should the world end..._

The rain came unexpectedly in the desert, as all desert storms do.

All of a sudden, the blue skies clouded over, and the water came pouring down. Lightning struck the ground and singed it. The flowers that used to not exist existed, their seeds fed by the downpour. Floods built in distant canyons, only to wash off of the terra's edges that were not seen. Sand turned to mud. The cacti bloomed, and animals came out, shaking their heads in disbelief. You could almost hear the hare whisper to the partridge, _Can you believe it? I didn't think the rain was due for another week. Good thing, though, because those youngsters just eat more by the hour._

And the partridge just might coo back, _Oh, I hear ya, lady. But the rain will do us good. The insects will come out and the berries will grow. We will live to see another summer. _

They found refuge in one of the town's buildings. The one with the stablest of roofs and windows to look out of. The rain seemed to rejuvinate.

Aerrow fell asleep clutching Radarr in his arms. Finn fell asleep clutching air and himself. He barely slept, though. He preferred to watch the rain come down and listen to the drum of it above his head.

_Well, now, _he thought to himself. _This is nice_. And then his eyes closed, but he didn't dream. Just lay there with closed eyes and open ears. The world flowed into him through his ears. And the night came.

...

Morning rose like steam from the depths of evening.

After the rain.

It's a label put on laundry detergents that smell good enough, but that's what they smell like, you know? Laundry. Sharp and artificial.

The real deal is much better. It's musty yet clean, intoxicating, enveloping, and it makes you swoon as if you are drunk. Breathing in is heaven and breathing out is a curse. You can't get enough of it; it braces you and sends thrills up your spine.

In the city, its the smell of wet asphalt and wet rubber, wet metal and wet concrete, wet humans. You sleep longer and everything feels damp. In the wood, its the wholly natural smell of damp leaves, soaked earth, and air so thick you could cut it into pieces and pocket them. But in the desert, its everything. The rustic ancient ritual of rain in the desert is as sacred as it is beautiful, and it will continue.

...

Finn got up early.

Wait...

Finn got up early?

Well, I don't believe it either, but...moving on. He stepped out of the house and looked at the changed painting before him. Gold had been replaced with emerald; the sage's smell magnified a hundred times by the damp. He thought he heard voices, but perhaps it was just the smell of everything and the sight of everything that was making him think these things. He could've sworn, however, that he heard Piper's laughter, somewhere in the sky.

Back inside, Aerrow's leaf colored eyes fluttered open, and soon, Radarr was up as well. They stood together and faced the dawn together and smiled together.

It was a new day.

Perhaps, the one where they'd find her.

...

Should the world end, and everything we know disappear, what will things be like?

Will the sky become green and the grass blue? Perhaps the changes will be more subtle. Imagine a world without love. Without hate. Without emotion or feeling or sense of being. There is only the act of being, but not the realization.

Will there still be stars, I wonder.

They say the more stars, the better. I agree.

Stars are beautiful things...

Should the world end, I suppose I have only one wish: that whoever ended it all leaves the stars in place.


	5. don't ever look back

_6. Ashes and Blood_

After the rain, the desert was still, save for two.

"See how it comes alive again," she said, smiling.

"Maybe it was never dead in the first place," is his thought-provoking response.

**...**

When the sky was young, and he was too, he had dreams, and he had aspirations. Don't we all?

_Well, _you ask, _what happened?_

Life, that's what. Reality checks abound. War is what happened. Death. He remembers the first time he and his squad visited a conquered terra. Really, conquered was too polite a term. More like destroyed. Leveled. Snapped into a million pieces and flushed down the celestial toilet. The sky was a gray and forecast slate, like a chalkboard without the chalk. The smear of hastily erased calculations hovering dangerously. But below, where the true evil lay, fragments of lives were strewn about the ground. Small fires burst from blackened wood. Ash fell like snow. You could've sworn it _was _snow.

He had broken away from the others while they searched for survivors. The governor's mansion, reduced to a heap of metal and marble and granite, all blackened. Footprints in the dust made by peoples now dead. A red stain spread from beneath a pile of bricks that made his stomach clench. Bile flew up to his mouth, and his tongue bled from biting down on it so harshly.

He had come to war for glory, but found only ashes and blood.

Now, many years and many mistakes later, he stood at the entrance of an old building with the fading letters that spelled out, "BANK," hanging over the doorway. Beside him stood a young woman who hadn't felt the horror of it all yet. She hadn't heard the screams of dying humans, the wails of parents as they watched their children burn, the shattering of young lives lined up against a wall and _shot_, so mercilessly, as if they were _dogs_.

Somewhere, a cricket chirped. And the innocence of it was in equal parts beautiful, haunting, and painful.

So simple. Not like the world away from the borders of this terra.

**...**

A scream was what reunited them.

A very _high pitched _scream. A very _girly _scream. Coming from _FINN_.

He and Aerrow, along with a rather disgruntled Radarr, stepped out into the revived desert and breathed in the still damp air. There was the odor of life drifting into their nostrils. And then...

_"Rt-ti-rt-ti..."_

"AHHHHHHHH! OH MY GOD!!"

The preppiest of cheerleaders would've been green with envy. Finn leapt up about two feet into the air and thudded into Aerrow, who drew his blades and pointed them at the source of the noise. Which was a rattlesnake, who's midmorning nap had been interrupted by Finn's feet.

_"Rt-ti-rt-ti...Hthththththsssssss..."_

Beady eyes with slits for pupils glared at him, unblinking, unwavering. _Diamondback_. No words came from it; it wasn't like the fox. Its message was clear enough already: I hate you. Go away. Or you'll DIE. It had become a staring contest, and the snake was winning. His thick body glistened with dew and sunlight. He was ugly, his expression wicked, emitting evil that was so thick you could taste it.

Suddenly...

"Reawr!"

There was a blur of feathers and claws. The snake lay limp as a leather belt on the dust, but only for a moment, before the falcon disappeared into the distance.

Gone.

**...**

"AHHHHHHHH! OH MY GOD!!"

The scream hit the silence with a loud and satisfying _SMACK! _Even the sun grimaced. Flinched behind a cloud for a few moments.

She turned back towards the town they'd left, finding nothing there. The ghost town, where murmurs seeped through the wood and wails echoed off of the stone.

"Finn." The word dashed forward ahead of her as she ran. He didn't even have time to _ask _for an explanation, he just sped after her, cursing, his arm aching. Time sped up, then stopped rather abruptly, hurling her into the seemingly empty street. Behind the buildings.

There. A spiky red-head and a dusty blond. A tiny whatever-Radarr-is standing beside them, all staring at a streak of sand.

"HEY!"

Another slap.

Another turning of the head.

"Piper?"

"Hey, guys!"

"PIPER!"

Another slap. The face of the sky will turn pink, soon enough. She dashes into his arms and inhales the smell of rain and damp wood. She's missed him. He's missed her. He squeezes her so close, it hurts, and she can hear the light pops of her joints cracking. _Crick, cli, prp. _Owrch. She laughs and murmurs to him to please let go, and he does. He looks like he'll cry. Finn mimes eating popcorn and dabbing his eyes; she grinds the heel of her foot into his toe. And relishes his yelp of pain. Even Radarr looks happy; his big eyes have lit up and he's jumping up and down ecstatically.

"Where's Stork? And Junko?" is her first question, but it dies.

Because the sky is readying for another slap.

She's forgotten entirely about her...companion.

Shit.

**..**

"What the _hell _is he doing there?" is joined with the zing of blades being drawn is joined with "What the frack!?" is joined with "REEP!" into one very painful punch. The sky collapses.

Falls.

Clouds tumble into each other and land like elephants on the ground.

Fragments of blue shatter onto shoulders.

Red eyes hit green hit blue hit honey.

Only one will never spoil...

**...**

They said the coyote was the trickster of the prairie.

But others called him the Great Father, and he was in charge of _dreams_. Dreams, to the ancients, were powerful things, prophecies and windows to a world that is too powerful for mere mortals to be privvy to while they are awake.

He, the Coyote, was even more powerful than his counterpart, Wolf, because the ancients listened to the adage, "Quality, not quantity." But we've forgotten. To us, he's a dusty hound who roams the land and snaps at the air, his ribs jutting out, his stomach a bottemless pit. 'Yotes are lowly, 'Yotes are not animals we look to for inspiration.

Methinks that once you forget Coyote, you also forget to dream.

Everything's connected...

Everything's a circle...

...and once it begins, it also ends. And in doing so, does neither.

**...**

"Hey, hey, hey! No fighting here!"

"What? What do you mean, 'No fighting'?" Aerrow growls. "You don't intend to try that, 'We're all on the same side,' nonsense, again, do you? Because he's not on the same side, he's as other-sidey as it gets! He'll kill us, sure as...as...peaches!" Slap, slap, slap, slap, slap. Except now, the slaps find naught but air...

Meanwhile, the Dark Ace is just standing there staring. Not in a, "Die, you," sort of way. More of a..."Oh. Gee. Whoops."

And then not even.

**...**

"What came first, the chicken or the egg?"

Haven't we all heard that question? Now, I, as a storyteller, should really refrain from jumping to these _tangents_, but they always somehow lead back to the ploy. So I'll continue.

Scientifically, I could launch into a lengthy lecture in how chickens evolved and how dinosaurs laid eggs and then evolved into chickens and a lot of other mumbo-jumbos you as an audience do not care to hear. But theoretically, it's an almost impossible question. Like I said before, a circle ends and begins all at once. Cycles of life end in death, yet from death always comes life; even the rotting body of a worm will eventually become earth that will feed the grass. No matter how insignificant your actions seem at the time, they are all part of a greater balance.

Listen to me...I sound like my grandmother.

What came first...he chicken or the egg?

Moving back to the scene before us, can you imagine freezing it for a moment? Hitting the button of some remote and making the image pause? Place yourself in the shoes of one of the people. Feel their heart racing inside your chest, the sun beating down upon your head, the dust rising slowly at your feet. The solemnity, the tension. The thoughts speeding across your mind like lightning. The chills and thrills.

The absurdity of it all.

**...**

"Sure as peaches? Dude, that's weak."

"Shut up, Finn."

"Aerrow, his arm's in a _sling_."

"Which you gave him, no doubt."

"Well-"

"What did he _do _to you? Were you brainwashed!?"

"Actually..."

Everyone quiets as Dark Ace slips in his first word in the conversation.

"...no." He finishes. Piper looks at him quizically and Aerrow just glares.

**...**

_7. Burning, Burning_

"What do you want?" she asked him.

"Everything," was the answer, yet he gave nothing.

**...**

When they start back, with Aerrow grudgingly calling truce and allowing Dark Ace to trail behind them, mostly due to Piper's cajoling, the broken sky has fixed itself and is slowly climbing up the mountainside. It clings to the rocks and reaches the top, before staring at the pale slate where it once lay. Then, summoning all its might, it jumps up into the air and fixates itself amongst the clouds. Looking down as if it had never left.

Across the desert, up the cliff, into the tunnel. They're thirsty and hungry; Piper's already beginning to plan how they're going to find food. She has a few Paralyzer Stones left...and she could weave a net for fish...

Aerrow's considering whether or not he should just shove Dark Ace's head into one of the rocks and leave him there. Finn's trying his hardest to look stoic, which is not an easy task for him. Radarr clings to Aerrow's shoulder and chatters.

"Who?"

"You."

"Not me. Never me." Pause. "Always _us_."

**...**

Pessimism.

Definition: the doctrine that evil overbalances happiness in life.

Stork would say that his pessimism has kept him alive for longer than most of his species. That his paranoia is a good thing. On his side of the argument is the fact that he led his team through the Black Gorge and _lived._

_To._

_Tell._

_The._

_Tale._

On the side of his friends is the fact that ninety-nine percent of the time, his devices don't work, exceptions being his X-ray Peepers and the multiple traps he's got installed around the Condor. So maybe he's got something going. Maybe Aerrow and Piper and the others need to imagine all the things that could possibly go wrong and then _avoid _them. Of course, that's after assembling antibiotics, herbal medicines, bandages, and all other first-aid items in a portable case, as well as the best Healing Crystals money can buy. Just in case your evasion doesn't work.

If Stork had his way...

Well, that's the problem. The only way Stork can have his way is to..._not _have his way. Who else present sees the paradox in that situation? I definitely do. I suppose he's just never happy. He'll only start being happy if he stops being paranoid. And that'll never happen.

Right?

**...**

Optimism.

Definition: the doctrine that happiness overbalances evil in life.

Now, many people are optimistic. It's a good thing to be optimistic.

You live longer.

But there is such a thing as being too optimistic. Mix overoptimism with innocence and you get naitivity. Not to be confused with _na_tivity, which is a whole new story altogether. No, naive is Junko, and Junko is naive.

So what do you think happens when you put an overly pessimistic Merb with an overly optimistic Wallop in a very dangerous forest on an unknown terra for the time period of three days?

I'll tell you what.

_CHAOS._

**...**

They left the tunnel behind.

The mountain stream was a piece of heaven, fallen to the earth. Aerrow, Piper, Finn, and Radarr crowded around it.

Dark Ace lingered behind and pondered what he should do.

His throat burned with the intensity of a thousand suns; it wasn't that he felt no thirst. It was that he felt subconscious. The girl was the only one he trusted...remotely...but she seemed to have forgotten him. A perfect word to sum up his expression would be "crestfallen." Yes, the Dark Ace was.

Crestfallen.

She looked over her shoulder and saw him leaning against a tree older than all of them put together, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down with every painful swallow. She cupped water inside her hands and watched it flow back into the stream. Saw a leaf shaped as a bowl and filled it with the life-giving liquid. Her vision reeled as she stood; she felt dizzy and blamed it on the heat. Then handed the green leaf to him and watched his expression turn from crestfallen to.

Confused.

Aerrow noticed the giving of the water and frowned ever so slightly, then got to his feet as well and started back down the mountain. Finn and Radarr clustered around him, hoping that, should the Dark Ace turn on them, Aerrow could be their...meat shield or something.

The Dark Ace trailed behind Piper. Her breath, he noticed, was shorter. She began to fan herself and stumble over seemingly nothing. His expression turned from confused to.

Cautious.

The three C's of Dark Ace's day. Crestfallen, Confused, and finally, Cautious. I would tack on a fourth, but even I don't find number four conclusive. All I know is that Piper fell to her knees, then to her side, face flush with the red tint of.

Fever.

Fire.

A hand was pressed to her forehead; it took a moment for him to realize that it was his own. She burned. Burned. Burned like the desert. "Hey!" came out against his will, weak and hoarse, but somehow the others heard and turned. Aerrow sped back up the mountainside and watched the man he still called his enemy lift Piper's head up from the ground. Whisper "Hey," rather cautiously. And here...the fourth and most inconclusive C of them all...

With care?

**...**

"...yellow fever, malaria, pneumonia, dysentry, scurvy, Laughing Fever, Bog Measles..."

Junko was beginning to regret asking Stork just what could possibly go wrong. And the Merb was still on diseases; he hadn't even _mentioned _exterior injuries yet.

"...Fluff Mon-"

"Stork, um, I don't mean to, um, _interrupt_, or anything, but how much more do you have?" Junko asked, looking worried.

"Oh, I got plenty. But...in a nutshell..." He twitched. "EVERYTHING could go wrong. EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING!" he barked, his black hair quivering with the rest of him in indignition. Junko smiled sheepishly.

"You didn't _have _to follow me. I said you could stay behind, you know," he said, before walking on.

"But then I would've been alone!" Stork shrieked, throwing his arms up in exasperation. "This way, when I die, I'll have someone to carry my body back to the others!" He looked about him, his large ears picking up all the sounds of the forest. Junko didn't reply; perhaps his optimism didn't allow him to think of things like death at moments such as this.

Turning his yellow-eyed gaze to the mountains beside them, Stork suddenly felt his breathing slow. For a moment, he thought it was lymph nodes in his esophagus causing his throat to close up, but it turned out it was just something he didn't feel much. Calm. The mountains, they seemed to giggle at him good-naturedly. From a distance, they looked like the backs of ancient reptiles, laid down to sleep for eons. The trees glittered with morning dew, as did the spiderwebs stretched between them, which he avoided most carefully. They looked like gossamer thin necklaces, with carefully hammered gold strings and diamonds the color of the sun. Jewlery that branches wore.

**...**

"For someone so skinny, she's damn heavy," Finn grumbled. His hands were beneath Piper's arms, while Aerrow held her legs. Radarr continued to splash water on her face. Dark Ace, once again, trudged in back, due to Aerrow's insistance that he didn't "touch her under pain of _death._" Exact words. Back to crestfallen for the man.

"Just don't drop her," was Aerrow's winded and worried response. "Don't drop her," he mumbled once more to himself.

"Dude, you don't have to say it twice."

"Shut up, Finn."

**...**

_9. We Meet Again, My Fickle Friends_

Death.

**...**

An end.

**...**

But a beginning as well.

**...**

Sickness.

**...**

A part of.

**...**

Life.

**...**

Should you survive it.

Here she lies.

Here is the grass.

She is Piper.

Lies is the thought that is crossing her fever-induced dream.

_I am alone..._

_But not really._

_Someone is with me. He is tall and his body is warm. He's holding me against him and I can smell sun on his skin. Sun, grass, lemon, lime, and fruit. Like summer, all at once. I feel empty, cold, until he touches me. Then I am warm._

_Warmth._

_I love yet hate this warmth._

**...**

He's hers. He knows he is. He wants her to realize this as he sits beside her and strokes her hair. Places a cool cloth on her forehead. Aerrow sighs and lets his breath caress her skin. She mumbles something about summer in a bottle as she sleeps. Twitches slip up and down her body; she looks like Stork having a nervous breakdown. Her fingers seem to grab at nothing.

More water on her skin. Junko and Stork's status slides to the back of the young Sky Knight's head. Guiltily, but they do. He has priorities.

**...**

Later, when Finn persuades Aerrow to get some sleep, the Dark Ace slides out from the shade and watches her sleep. The late afternoon sun makes her face light up. Like gold. Cinnamon.

He smells sun, grass, lemon, lime. Fruit. Sweetness. Salt. Summer.

He smells it on her. Tastes it in the air. Crouching a few feet away, hunched over, his red eyes glued to her, he hears her mumble one word.

"Honey..."

And he's transfixed.

**...**

The greatest battles are fought on places you can't mark on paper. You can't point them out on detailed maps or give someone the coordinates to punch into the internet. You must turn inwards. The greatest battles are fought inside our hearts.

This storyteller thinks that wars on the outside are unecessary, but wars on the inside are vastly important. They define us. Our choices, they tell the world who we are. The Dark Ace, his decisions painted an intricate portrait of who he had been and who he had become. The same goes for every other character, every other being in this story I am now recounting to you.

I said it to them when we met, and I say it to _you_, now.

Choose your path, but leave some markers.

So that you'll be able to find your way home.

**...**

She wakes up with a huge, shuddering sigh. It's midnight. Dark Ace has fallen asleep nearby. His eyes snap open, and he jumps to his feet.

Piper sits up and rubs her eyes. A cough forces its way out of her throat. "What time is it?" she mumbles. Then looks up and sees him. A sillhouette against the dark blue sky.

"You awake?" he whispers, but she doesn't answer.

Summer slides off of him and drifts into her nose.

**...**

Morning brings Stork and Junko.

Morning brings joy.

"You're awake!"

"Guess whatever you did must've helped."

"Piper...?"

"Yeah?"

"What were you dreaming about?"

She doesn't answer for a few minutes, and when she does, it's as cryptic as her mumbled words. "Life," she whispers, then gives Aerrow a hug. But over his shoulder, she sees the dark profile of a tall man. He looks at her with ruby eyes, then turns away into the dark.

When the mist rises, two shapes are seen lumbering towards the group. Towards the mangled Condor and intact rides. One is large and one is slim. One is silent and the other is laughing, shouting, and making a perfect din. We shall call them Shape A and Shape B. Shape A shuddered and staggered away from Shape B, who was the one making all the noise. Shape B caught sight of Aerrow and roared, "HEY!! GUYS! WE FOUND YOU!"

Shape A groans and slaps his forehead.

**...**

We meet again.

We.

Meet.

Again.

Who is we, what is meet, and what do you mean by again?

We is the world. Meet is a greeting. Again is a continuation of that which lasts forever. Of infinity. Some things fix, some things cut, but those that matter most, they encompass. They are our all and our everything, yet they are also our nothing. I'm not talking about anything spiritual, or scientific, but just amazing. They are what we want them to be, and they are what we believe in most strongly.

My fickle friend.

My? My is me. Me is whoever is speaking, whoever's lips are forming these words. Fickle? Fickle is death, but life is fickler still. Friend? Friend is the one you call on stormy nights when your mind is a ship sailing on the choppy sea. Some people help, others oppose, but those you truly love, and truly _need_, they are the ones who touch your soul and leave their fingerprints there.

And we are never the same.

**...**

He watched her sleep, the night her fever raged.

He watched the wind twist her hair and her lips form a word.

One word that would linger on the edges of his ears and refuse to go out, and refuse to go in. That would dangle in front of his mouth, impossible for him to either say it or swallow it. Just for him to see. Never to feel.

Her eyes flash like fire, like summer, like honey.

They'll last in his memory for eternity.

**...**

_10. Here Lies Maria_

They.

They is two people. One is a man, one is a woman, and they walk down to the pier. The man first.

She follows.

**...**

"Stork, look. How long do you think it'll take?"

"Without new equipment? Three months."

"Th...Th...Three months?"

"Unless you can fly out there and get me some more parts and tools, yeah, three months!!"

**...**

Dark Ace found it.

The pier, I mean. He found the pier. It's damp and soggy with morning mist. He reckons its rarely ever dry in the summer. It's old, too. Ancient. Made years back by some enterprising fisherman whose bones no doubt lay at the bottom of the lake. Along with his boat, rod, and tack box.

He saw it and stood on it and sat down at its edge.

She found it.

The journal, I mean. She found the journal.

She walked up behind him and sat down beside him. She placed a hand on his and made him turn to look at her. "What?" he snapped, unintentionally. She ignored the harshness of his tone and smiled.

"You were there, weren't you?" she whispered.

Pause.

"Yes."

She lifts her hand and turns to face the lake. Even this early in the morning, she's hot. Sweat dribbles down the sides of her face, as they do his. The water looks cool and inviting; she proceeds to take off her boots and roll up her pants. Then, it's a quick slip from wood to water. It covers her entirety, strokes her body and cools the fire of her eyes. Makes steam rise.

Opening her eyes, she sees sunlight filtering in from above, speckling the lake's gravelly bottom. There are underwater plants, and in the distance, dark shapes that are no doubt fish. Ideas rumble through her mind. Blowing out bubbles, she turns her gaze back towards the pier.

Something dark lies at the bottom.

Something dark and square and book-like.

Rising to the surface for air, then diving back down before he can get a word in, Piper swims to the bottom and grabs it. It's a book, alright, bound in oilskin. It's slippery in her hands, but she holds on somehow and breaks the water's top once more, air rushing into her lungs with bliss. She holds up the book as an answer to the questions she knows he has.

"What is that?"

"I don't know."

"Well?"

"Let's find out."

**...**

"Where's Piper?"

"Dunno." Finn shrugged. "C'mon, let's just go without her. We can grab a few tools and lug 'em back ourselves. And, look, we've got a map, right?" He pointed at the scroll Aerrow held.

"Yeah...sure. Whatever." Aerrow shrugged and revved his skimmer's engine, as did Finn. Radarr snapped his goggles on and leaned forward in his sidecar. The wings sprang out and the wheels spun. They held enough fuel to carry them fifty miles; it'd be enough to go there and back. Money crinkled warmly in their pockets.

But something weighed them down. Something heavy, resting in the bottoms of their hearts.

"Where's Piper?"

"Dunno."

**...**

Stork banged the Condor with a wrench, trying to smooth a dent out by popping it from the other side. He had tied several large chains around the ship and attached them to Junko's ride. The Wallop was seated and waiting.

"We need to pull it out of the ditch so that I can re-weld the bridge and nose," was the Merb's reason. Drastic measures.

Junko smiled. "Ready?"

Stork leapt out of the way. "Fine. Go."

_Vrr, vrrrrm. Skrreeeeeeeeeeeeeee!_

The wheels turned and the ride squeaked forward, as did Junko. He furrowed his brow and jammed the accelerator down to the floor; with a loud groan, the ship moved ever so slightly. Another burst of energy. Another groan. Another burst...

No groan.

No movement.

"IT'S STUCK!"

"I...thought so."

**...**

She opened the book, anticipation bubbling. Peeled the oilskins away.

The paper was still dry, amazingly. Still dry, and still as white as the day they'd been filled up with dark black ink. Handwritten, but the writing was legible. This person had been expecting readers in the future. Stroking the pages, she looked up at the man beside her, wet hair dripping onto the wood. Her slim fingers flipped through the volume.

"It's a journal," she concluded, before handing it to him.

"Hm." He looked through it. "He's a fisherman."

"Where does he say that?" she wonders, leaning towards him and brushing her cheek against his shoulder. He starts away from her based on instinct. Again, she tries not to notice.

"Here." He points at a line. She reads: _The catch was good today. Maria and I hauled in a wonderful catch. But she's in need of repairs; her hull leaked and one of the oars is splintering up the handle. The lake is calm and the fish are abundant. Soon, it'll be trout season once again, and I'll have good dinners every night. _

_Father Keen, ill again today._

"Maria..." Piper whispers.

"Maria. For the sea," is his response, in the same hushed tone. They are quiet, because they don't wish to risk breaking the perfect silence. The rustle of the pages does that for them.

"His boat. Her bones must lay beneath the water," she murmurs dramatically, before breaking into a smile. She forgets he's tried to kill her before.

"Indeed. Beside a cracked oar." He forgets, too.

"What color was her name painted in?"

"Blue; how could a man name a boat Maria without making her letters blue?"

"I concur."

They laugh and the silence splinters at last. She wears the pieces around her neck. They both forget and set the past aside. What was yesterday? Nothing. What is tomorrow? Everything. All parts of the circle.

**...**

A heron takes flight.

Blue feathers dot the surface of the lake.

Go down seven feet.

There lie the rotting wooden bones of a ship.

Fading paint on her side, covered and preserved by mud. Azure. They spell a name.

The name of the sea.

* * *

I changed my name!

I updated!

All worthy of yayness!


	6. heartwreck

OH GOD YES. I've finally updated. So I'll shut up now, and let you read...

* * *

_10. Bones of Time_

She lays on the pier again; it's her new favorite place.

He sees her and watches the curves of her body, round against the jaggedness of the landscape. This terra is a jagged terra: sharp mountains, sharp blades of grass, sharp rocks, sharp trees. Only the flowers and the water are smooth. Even the name, VALE. Letters abundant with angles, and no round vowels. The consonants are sharp, the A is harsh, and the E, invisible. But somehow, it ties together, a bow on something so ugly it's beautiful. But her...

She's _just_ beautiful.

A sharp intake of breath.

And that's the only reaction.

He spares.

...

Piper rarely ever swims.

The beaches of Tropica don't really appeal to her. It's the thought that it's shared with so many others. But here, she's alone. When the men are working and Dark Ace is sulking, she strips down to her nothing and jumps into the water. Sits at the bottom and watches the fish go by until her lungs feel as if they're on fire. She never felt more alive. Feeling alive is beautiful, feeling alive is _special_. What's the meaning of life?

There is none.

...

"So...how long have we been flying?"

Aerrow turns towards Finn and shakes his head. "Dunno. You see anything?"

"Negative."

Humans can be _so damn annoying_.

...

They've been gone for three hours. THREE HOURS!! _THREE HOURS_!!

That's like a year for teenagers!

They leaned forward in their seats out of boredom and tiredness. Three hours, heading towards the nearest populated terra, which on the map, was only two miles away. It was getting extremely annoying, redundant, and...pointless. Just when Aerrow opened his mouth to suggest they turn back, Finn's sharp eyes caught a dark shape in the not so far distance.

"There. A terra," he said.

"Oh, finally," Aerrow groaned, banging his head against the control panel. Radarr chirped in joy, his large eyes beaming with relief. He was starving.

They pulled closer, closer, closer, all their heartbeats melting together like glop, oozing, becoming something huge and slimy and ugly. Anticipation is ugly. Especially when its dashed to the floor and breaks into a million gloppy pieces.

"This terra looks familiar," Aerrow grumbled. Finn wasn't really listening, though, he just landed on a green, grassy patch of earth and looked around.

"See a city or something anywhere?"

Aerrow landed close behind him. "Finn, I think we're-"

"You guys back already? Where's all the stuff?" Junko was lumbering up the hillside, his skin glistening with sweat and something else no one really wants to know.

Aerrow grabs Finn's collar. "You mean to tell me we've been going in _circles _this entire time?!"

"Eh-hehe...hah?"

...

Stork puffs his dark hair into the air with a single, disheartened breath.

"I hate to say 'I told you so,' but..." -big breath- "I TOLD YOU SO!"

"What? You never told us we couldn't get off of this place!" Finn wailed.

"What do you mean, 'I didn't tell you'?" Stork barked. "Of course I told you! I distinctly remember saying that no one gets off of Vale! This place is haunted! Magic! _Deadly! _In short...we're doomed."

Piper is sitting with the others, trying to bring some reason into the conversation. "Stork, do you know if there's _any _way to get out of here?"

He thinks. "Look. This place is like the Expanse. Markers didn't work there...so they probably won't work here either." All of a sudden, in one of his rare bursts of joy, he bounds towards the mangled Condor and pops out of the rubble with a heavy set volume in his hands. "She survived!" he purrs, before opening it to the back and flipping through the yellowed pages. "V. V. V. Vale."

Piper flips her head to see the title. "1,00 Deadly Terras of Atmos," she mumbles out loud. "But there are only one thousand anyhow, Stork."

"Exactly."

"Oh."

He plops the book down and everyone gathers around him. "'Vale,'" Stork mumbles. "'Inescapable. It is said that the terra is cursed due to human interference, AKA mining, farming, and general misconduct. Legend says only those who enter the terra's heart can truly leave it behind.' What does _that _mean?"

"Dunno," Finn grumbles. "Probably something philosophical or whatnot. Like, 'You must keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.'"

At the mention of the word enemy, Piper subconsciously touches the small square beneath her shirt that is the journal. Aerrow notices.

His breath seems to stop.

...

While the kids and her, (because he really has ceased to think of her as a child,) spoke of leaving the terra and fixing the ship, he's sitting on a rock close to the base of the Sliabs. His arm is throbbing, but Piper has said that its getting better. He'll be able to shed that hated splint soon.

Dark Ace wonders what the world outside is like.

Storm Hawks and the Dark Ace, all missing.

Ain't that suspicious?

...

There are days we wish would last forever, and there are days that can't end soon enough.

Strange is fiction, but stranger is truth. Real life never ceases to amaze us.

Endless skies and boundless hearts.

This was a day that came after the good day, but before the best day. The best days are the ones we wish would end so that we could look back on it and smile. There are days we look upon and cringe, though. Days we wish we could forget but can't. Days we shed tears over.

He never really shed tears over the worst days of his life. He never shed tears for anything. It was wrong to cry, wrong to want to cry, wrong to become human when you know you're a monster.

She, however, thinks...no, knows...there's hope for him. She knows because she believes in the best of everyone. There's that wedge between them, but they're both chiseling away at it. It breaks, slowly, piece by piece, as the string that connects him and her wraps around it tighter and tighter, stronger and stronger. Piper has realized he's got a big heart.

He just chose to fill it with the wrong things.

He could've given the world so much to appreciate. But the thing about life is that it's not really careful. It throws out the best and keeps the worst. Living on the fringes of society will do that to a person. When you're born in the dark, its all you know, and a sudden thrust into the light won't make you love seeing.

You need to do such things gradually.

Like fires start with a single spark of flame...mending starts with a single spark of pain.

...

_11. Apple Blossom, Apple Tree_

Now that all of the skimmers could be put to use, well...

The Condor was freed from her rut at last.

...

"PULL!"

"Finn..."

"PU--Yeah?"

"I'm giving the orders, here."

"Oh."

...

"If life is fair, then why do roses have thorns?"

Someone mumbled that to me the other day, words spoken with lips and no tongue.

Maybe they said it wrong, or maybe I heard it wrong, but either way, it's a very wrong statement. It should be, "Life _is _fair. That's why roses have thorns!" What is fair? Fair is when everything is balanced. It's not when you get everything you want and nothing you don't, it's when you get an even amount of both. People tend to only whine, "It's _not _fair," not taking time to notice that it is. They've got so many things they want, even things they want but don't need, yet they still choose to pick at the things they don't have.

That's one type of person. Another is the one who has what they need, but nothing they want. They only focus on what they have, never on what they could accumulate. Which, in a way, is almost worse than the first person. Because you're never truly happy. That's Piper. The third category is those who have what they need, know what they want, and yet...are too timid to ask.

That's Aerrow.

The Dark Ace? Well, he's in a category all his own.

The one who knows what he doesn't need and focuses on that and that alone.

'Tis a crying shame, when a human is unbalanced on the inside. But it makes for good stories. Because in the end, another human will come along and even things out again.

And _that_, my reader. That.

Is.

_Fair._

...

**WHY!?**

Because.

**WHY?! WHY NOT? WHY WON'T SHE WANT ME? WHY DOES SHE CHOOSE ANOTHER?**

Have you tried asking her?

**I can't.**

Why ever not?

**Because I'm scared.**

Of?

**Of me.**

...

She was a rose.

And she had thorns.

Small ones.

But it's the small ones that hurt the most, isn't it?

...

You by yourself?

Alone?

Ha-ha. If you seriously think _you_,on your lonely lonesome, are significant to the greater plan of things, well. Something's wrong with you. That, "One person can make a difference!" junk? Don't take that literally. Because if you can't be anything by yourself.

Think of it this way:

You.

A thread.

A line.

Alone. Wavering, loose, nothing to connect to, nothing to tie around. Nothing.

But...

Weave it around another. Then another. And another. And another, and another. It becomes a rope. Tie ropes together. They encompass the world. A better way to put it? One person can make a difference. Because one person is one person more. Do you think any one human got anywhere without any help? No. Lives touch. People change.Just...the thing with humans is we want all the credit.

It's only natural.

It doesn't really matter, in the end, who the credit is given to. Because the world in its subconscious knows the truth.

If you press your hands into wet cement, you leave a mark. If you stroke another person's life, you change it. In which direction, maybe you'll never know. You could be born, live, and die, never realizing that maybe, you've just changed the world through another.

Yes, a person can make a difference. But not alone.

...

"AHA!"

Piper holds up a net woven out of willow reeds and grit. It may _look _flimsy, but she's certain it will work. It'd better work. She dips it into the slow moving river and waits. Waits. Waits. Little ripples tell her the fish are out. So all she needs to do is wait.

She pulls on the string and feels something heavy at the bottom. YES! With a brisk yank, the net comes flying out and whams into her, knocking her back with soggy plant matter. It smells revolting. Feels even more so. Like dead and clammy hands. Pushing the stuff off of her, her expression dampens considerably when she sees no fish. No, just a large amount of splashing in the water that was _probably _never in her net in the first place. The net has a huge, gaping hole in the bottom.

Something's digging into her side. A book. The journal.

_Catch was good today. Maria and I went fishing in the lake. Just me and a bunch of Paralyzer Stones..._

Mua-ha! Sound effect time. She bounds to her feet and imagines the 1812 Overture playing somewhere. Runs to the Condor to see if any of her precious crystals survived the crash. And indeed they did. Clambering through piles of rusty metal and broken glass, not thinking of the possible consequences of a cut, she finds her room. Or what _was _her room. A crate that glitters blue; small stones run through her fingers like miracles, each and every one, and she picks them up and goes outside.

Piper, she's a genius. She slides a stone onto her staff, waits at water's edge, and when the fishies come...

...she fires.

...

"This is _deee_-licious. I love you, Piper. Gonna marry you," Finn says, between the lick smacking and the finger sucking.

"You better not mean that," she whispers, but no one hears. She turns to see him on the fringes of her eyesight, sees everyone else all focused on their own meals. Slipping through the tall grass, she presents him with a plate.

He presents her with a smile.

Aerrow sees.

And he frowns.

...

"Piper, you're spending too much time with him, I'm just worried-"

"About what, Aerrow? He won't kill me. Actually, I think he likes talking to me..."

He glares. "You kidding me? Piper, he's a _monster_. M. O. N. S. T. E. R."

"Quit the patronizing. I can spell. And I'm not a kid. I can choose who I talk to, _daddy,_" she hisses tauntingly. Why does she protect him so? Neither of them can really understand the answer, even though it's glaring them in the face.

She cares for that man, in a way she knows Aerrow can never appreciate.

...

"I wish it were fall."

They were standing in a small patch of grass beside a tree Piper has recognized is that which bears fruit. Red, sweet, fruit. An apple tree, with small and not yet ripened orbs hanging from its boughs.

"Do you now?" He's tired, she can see, but he doesn't have to listen, and she was talking more to herself anyways.

"Yeah...so that the apples could come, you know?" She points up; his eyes follow her finger. He smiles. Apples? He didn't know she liked apples; he always associated her with tangerines and Clementine's. Soft and slick and a tad sour on your tongue, sweet yet stinging all at once. Golden like the eyes that dance whenever they set upon you. Apples? That fruit which encases the wonders of the world. Whose smell precedes the heaven buried deep inside the flesh. He thought of her as tears of joy, when in reality, she's _just _joy.

"You like apples, do you?"

He doesn't realize it now...

...but the Dark Ace will never forget this day.

And why should he?

It's the first day of the last week of summer.

And a beautiful one, at that.

...

What's after us?

What's after the things that think they're everything, what's after the story to end all stories, what's the epilogue to the most terrifying and beautiful novel ever written?

Nothing and nothing's opposite.

Zero and zero's counterpart.

Infinity and the finite, side by side, in the world of cycles and the cycle of the world.

The breathing of the earth, the blinking of the stars, the sigh of the wind, the whisper of the rivers.

Water rising and oceans falling.

The sky.

That.

That's what's left.

...

Finn and Aerrow sit side by side next to the Condor, listening to Stork's diligent repairs.

"I don't understand her."

"Dude, are you _still _pissed at her talking to the Dark Ace so much? She's just being Piper. Piper'd bring a Raptor home and call him 'Sam' if she could." The blond chuckles at his humor, a humor so sophisticated that only _he _can appreciate it. At least, that's what he tells himself.

Aerrow snorts and claps his friend on the back. "I think she...she likes that man, Finn." His expression turns serious. Finn shrugs.

"What do you mean by 'like,' dude? There's tons of degrees of 'like'. I like pie. Does that mean I wanna marry it? No." The sharpshooter looks up with a nonchalant and easy smile on his face. "Man, I wouldn't worry if I were you. Not a speck."

"I think...I think she may...you know. Like him more than you like pie." Aerrow sighs, deep and thoughtful, so that it makes Finn tilt his head and start to become worried.

"You mean, like-like? Love-like? Aerrow, don't be stupid. She can't forget what he's done. No one can."

Aerrow nods, trying to act convinced. When he's not.

Later, when the sun's beginning to slide like a piece of butter across the sky, he heads over to where Piper's sitting, looking through a small book she's got propped up on one knee. As soon as she sees him coming, the book's closed and tucked beneath her shirt in a flash. He pretends not to notice. A tired smile envelops her lips like a hug, squeezing her cheeks up to tilt her eyes towards the ceiling of the world. But it's thin. Watery. Mortal. It's gone as soon as it came.

"Something wrong?" she asks.

Perhaps he looked too worried walking up to her. Perhaps that's what knocked the smile away. He sits down next to her, notices a pretty little flower in her hair and wonders where it came from.

"If it's about before..." she whispers. "...I'm sorry. But you should give him a chance!"

Aerrow sighs. "I don't want to talk about that, Piper."

"Then what _do _you want to talk about?"

"I guess...nothing."

She shrugs and leans against him, smiling once more. "That's fine by me."

...

Who are we?

When it all boils down, when everything is peeled away, and all the images torn to pieces, we're just humans.

Just...

Just...?

Is that fair to say we're 'just' humans? Are we more? Are we everything we think we are, or is there another story to us altogether?

The thing with stories is...

The thing with stories is that you need someone to tell them.

And once we're gone, who will tell the mountains and the wind and the trees and the grass, the lake, the river, the sea, who will tell them who we were? What we did? Why we did it?

Nothing is forever. We'll all die someday.

And I apologize if I scare you.

But.

Honesty.

I give you

honesty.

...

_12. Birdsong_

She had lost him.

He wasn't anywhere to be found.

Not at the pier...

Not at the rock...

Not at the Condor...

He aggravated her most efficiently.

...

He wants to imagine the old castle empty, although it never is. Perhaps, a millennium from now, when all of the skies have settled and no one moves anymore, the great iron citadel will quiet. Ravens will nest in its boughs and cobwebs will find homes where no cobwebs should be. And maybe...just maybe...a lonesome wren might find her lonesome way to the highest of the towers. And should nature will it, should people allow it, should the sky not forbid it, she will lift her earth colored throat to the sun, and sing...

"I've been _look_ing for you!"

He pops his head up at the noise. But she's not talking to him, she's talking to the little blue thing. Radarr, they called him. Then she turns towards the wood. Sees the man and smiles. "There you are," she mumbles at the animal, touching his nose with a dark and slim finger. "Go back to Aerrow, now."

He scooches over on the trunk he's sitting on and lets her sit down beside him. He knows something is wrong because she's silent. She's _always _silent, but today, her silence seems to penetrate the very aura of her existence, the very light of her being. Seemed to drain away from the innocence he's grown to appreciate, seemed to pull him down into stupidity.

"Something the matter?"

No? Shakes her head; why should she lie. Then...hesitation. A barely visible nod.

"What?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

She doesn't mean those words. She doesn't, because he can tell...she just wants to speak. "Really?"

Breathe, Piper. Breathe and tell him...

"Aerrow."

...a lie?

It's his turn to be silent.

A moment later...

"Oh."

The birdsong of a wren fills the air.

...

There are many times we believe that what we tell the world is a falsehood, and what we tell ourselves is the truth. It's called lying.

We humans do it all the time.

But sometimes...

In the middle of all this deception...

You end up...

Wrong.

You think you're lying to the world, when you're actually telling it the truth. And you think you're being honest to yourself, when yourself is the person you deceived most of all. Painful, isn't it? Pain, pain, we're always fearing pain. We fear death because it's painful. But pain's not necessarily something to be afraid of. Pain is better than numbness, drowning is better than dangling inches in front of water while thirst takes you over.

But we pray for the mercy we do not deserve.

Like lying beneath an ever lowering blade, slowly swinging towards your body...

Inch...

by tormenting inch.

It's not the actual moment of impact that slays you.

It's the waiting.

It's the expectation.

It's the thought that you are mortal after all.

...

The nip of fall was beginning to approach, but had not quite taken over. No more swims in the lake, however. She just sits on the pier with her arms wrapped around herself early in the morning. The sun has tanned her considerably well, with freckles all over her shoulders and collarbone. Her hair smells like wildflowers and honey. Her skin looks like cinnamon, lightly browned.

He...dangles behind her.

Waits.

So many thoughts colliding inside his mind. If it were a visual, it'd be a cross between a train wreck of jumbled ideas and a supernova of conflicting opinions. But on the outside, he's quiet. Stoic, no. Silent, mysterious, a little. But only to the boys. Piper knows the stories behind the story. A tale not yet told. A tangent not even _I _dare venture down.

A mask. A blank canvass. A lie.

All amount to the same thing: merciless pain.

Now that...

That's

irony.

...

_Bzzt, bzzt, bzzt, crrrack, pop..._

Stork's welding frenzy continues. He's been giving the Condor the makeover of her life. It's the most drastic thing he's ever done, and that's including her original reconstruction. Aerrow watches and helps when necessary; mostly, it's just Stork welding and Junko lugging around heavy pieces when needed. Finn is scouring the valley for food; has taken Radarr with him.

"Maybe we should make him help us," Junko had whispered one afternoon. He was looking at the Dark Ace suspiciously. Aerrow glared at Junko with such intensity that the Wallop backed down immediately.

_Bzzt, bzzt..._Stork flipped his welding helmet up. "Well, that's the starboard side done. Now, it's just on to straightening out the runway and...re-installing my anti-Fluff Monger devices I had in the hanger bay."

"You had...? What's a...? Oh, never mind." Aerrow moaned and thudded his head against the Condor's new wall. Stork stifled a yelp and turned away, trying not to think about the possible structural damage caused by the Sky Knight's cranium.

"Something wrong?" Junko asked, dropping the huge piece of scrap that had come from the rudders. "You look worried."

"Piper..." Aerrow groaned. "She's...no. Nothing's wrong, Junko. I'm just tired as hell."

Junko shrugged his massive shoulders subtly, (or at least, as subtly as someone the size of a small elephant can muster,) and turned away. He knew when to leave things be. Aerrow, meanwhile, sat down against the hull of the ship and closed his eyes momentarily. A single breath brought him a million smells: pine needles from the wood, the lake's milky odor, the sharp sting of wildflowers, the dirt and earth below him, the rusted metal behind him...people around him...

Humans...the smell of humans.

He concluded, there and then, that that was the best of them all.

...

Finn huffed and puffed as he marched up the sloping earth, the rise that looked like the crest of a bird's neck. He had loped easily for the first hour or so, then picked up the pace as the sun began to sink down the sky. He had promised to return the next day before noon. At this rate, he'd never find a good food source by then. Radarr, who was scurrying rapidly alongside him, chirped urgently and jumped up and down, pointing vigorously at the ceiling of the world, at the great natural clock.

The sharpshooter sighed. "Yeah, I _know_." He sat down and took a deep breath.

_What, _he wondered, _is the world like without us?_

A simple yet strangely deep question.

Yes, reader. What was the world like, with the Storm Hawks and the Dark Ace absent?

Well...

I will allow myself, momentarily, to wander off and explore...somewhere else...

...

_13. Meanwhile, Outside_

Ravess held the report with both hands to steady them from trembling. In vain. The paper rattled noisily, (who knew _paper _could be so loud?), so she loosened her grip and tried to relax, only to see her sweating fingers had left damp imprints on the sheet. The Master, however, didn't seem to notice anything. For the past few months, she'd been jittery and nervous, jumpy and more paranoid than ever, her mind often drifting off to distant places.

"What news?" she said airily, sitting down in her seat and resting her pale hands upon the desk.

"F-from the envoy?" Ravess blurted. "Master?" she added hastily.

"Yes, yes, from the envoy..."

"Erm...No sign of him around the site of the battle...but that was confirmed a month ago. We've been searching jails across the Atmos, interviewing bounty hunter-"

"No sign of him?" Cyclonis gulped. "Not a single...not his skimmer...no...body?" she whispered. Ravess could do naught but shake her head vehemently. This scene had been repeated hundreds of times since the Dark Ace had not come home, nearly six months ago. Half a _year_. Everyone had almost gotten used to him being gone...

A temporary truce had been called with Atmosia, most reluctantly, I might add. Seeing as the Storm Hawks and the Dark Ace were both, "missing in action," there didn't seem to be a valid point in continuing the stalemated fighting. A search for survivors...and, should it come to it, _bodies_...ensued, fruitlessly. The battle had taken place over an elusive terra named Vale, that not a single squadron or Talon envoy had been able to find. The Master was tired of waiting, waiting for news of her most faithful and powerful servant. Waiting for the war to be able to continue.

Ravess sighed quietly. "There is no difference, Master, between this report and the last one, save the date on the top," she mumbled hesitantly. "Perhaps...we should just..."

"We will _not _give up!" Cyclonis barked, banging a tightly wound fist on the table. Ravess jumped. "We will...not let him down. Wherever he is."

_She still believes he is alive...but that is _impossible_, _Ravess thought to herself. _She...will cling to him, to the thought of him, forever..._

"Master, the envoys are stretched thin. Talons, workers, are needed back at the base. If we are going to continue this truce, economic stability must be preserved at home. The search can take backstage for now." Ravess couldn't believe what she was saying. _Blatantly _contradicting the Master; Dark Ace, if he was alive, better come home soon. His absence was making everyone so much more...lax.

Cyclonis was silent, leaning back in her chair. Her eyes stared blankly at the paper in Ravess' hands. A few painfully slow moments seeped by, like mud across sand. Finally, a stiff and brutally reluctant nod. A chin tilted towards the ground. Violet eyes closed.

"Call off the search," was whispered from dry and cracked lips.

Ravess gave a brisk bow, before exiting. _Doors close, Dark Ace. Wherever you are...dead or alive...doors close._

...

"I don't think that matters!" she shrieked.

"Of course it _matters, _Dove, it's a verrry large matter, considering-"

"They will come back, Grandpapa. They _will _come home, because they...they..." The dark haired Galeian girl paused, swallowing her fear, her thoughts that maybe, maybe they were gone after all. "They will come. Because they promised," she whispered.

Everyone else nodded solemnly. It was the eve of the annual Sky Knight Gala, which was due to be canceled this year. Because no one really wanted to host it. They were all too busy looking for bodies to fill the coffins the Council had already bought and paid for. A monetary reward was being put up for a location, a name, a hint of a blue hawk, that could lead to answers, to relief, for the other squadrons. It wasn't enough that a truce had to be called with Cyclonia, no, the Raptors were in on it, too. And many of them were already scouring the Atmos for bodies. The most gruesome case was probably several weeks ago, when a snake of a lizard stepped onto Atmosia with the mutilated corpse of a boy, about Aerrow's height and build, with shocking red hair.

Turned out, the Raptor had killed him himself and was planning to reap the gold.

The Rebel Ducks were clustered about a small and flickering fire. Joining them was an extremely distressed Starling, who had dropped all other duties, including bringing Repton down, to search for her...

Well, her friends.

"They wouldn't have wanted us to stop living. To stop caring. Just because they were gone," the Interceptor said.

Another solemn nod.

Another moment gone by.

Without them.

...

_14. Reverence to the skyline_

The skies of Atmos painted themselves gold and red as sunset arrived.

Piper stood in front of the lake, the Dark Ace beside her. His eyes grazed her skin as if they were needles. Blood rose to the surface of broken veins and clotted, clear, like sweat. Nervous, nervous, sweat.

A few gentle and terrified tears trickled down Piper's face. He sighed.

A hesitant and careful arm looped around her shoulder. She turned towards him and wiped the salty water away. Water from the ocean.

They turned to see the skyline of trees and mountain. _So beautiful_. He felt her body beneath his fingers and wondered what was beyond this. What was beyond perfection.

A feeling slid down Piper's body, a wonderful tingle that began at the top of her head and hooked around her ankles, like the stinging of many, many kind and gracious bees, if there ever was such a thing.

A feeling that something.

Something was coming.

...

And its name was fall.

* * *

**End of Part Two: Summer**

See? See? It was long, and hopefully, good. Was it worth the wait? Tell me it was! REVIEW! MUAHAHAHAHA!


	7. a delusional inference

Omigod, it's an update! I'm not dead! IT'S ALIVE! And now I present Part 3, Chapter 1, of Perennial Rose...

**Part Three: Fall**

_1. The Sun made of gossamer_

He never asked _why _she cried.

He assumed she'd tell him...

if she wanted him to know.

And she blessed him for that piece of dignity. Blessed him for this...relationship.

As if it were...

as if it could be...

something perfect.

...

Have you ever stopped.

Not a question, a statement.

Have you ever stopped.

It's a statement because I have yet to reach the question. And the question is this: And listened to the sunrise?

Have you ever stopped. And listened to the sunrise? Well, reader, have you? I doubt it. Some of you may have stopped. Some of you may have listened to one thing or another at one point in time. But few of you...I wager, _none _of you...have ever listened to a sunrise. Seen one, likely. Felt one, possible. Smelt one, perhaps. Heard a sunrise?

At this point, you are no doubt wondering two things: Firstly, why in the world is this person just wandering off aimlessly? And secondly, how do you _listen _to a sunrise?

I can answer one of those two, and I choose to answer the latter. Because I really-

Perhaps I should move on.

To hear a sunrise. You sit. You stop. Movement must cease. You close your eyes, stifle your breaths, and relinquish your hold on this world. Open your ears, open your heart, and let the music flow into you. You will hear perfection.

...

Fall was a dress that Vale wore with reluctance, putting it on piece by solemn piece. Jumpy streams became languid pools of water, blades of grass began to shrivel, emerald green leaves lost their chlorophyll and started to brown and turn gold at the edges. Memories of past falls stream by, and the terra remembers the gradual killing of summer. Summer, that season that dances against embers and hurls her soul into the world with passionate vigor. She entices the world to come alive, pulls the sun into center stage, and throws petals of rich and full flowers into the air, into the sky. She's filled with stars and milky breezes and swims in lakes.

Fall.

Four letters that symbolize so damn much to the world.

And mean so damn little.

...

To the seven trapped on Vale, the approaching autumn was not a good thing.

Fall meant colder weather, fall meant that the sky would thunder with cold clouds. Fall meant that winter wasn't far away. Stork stopped sleeping. He worked so hard, it wouldn't be enough to say he had bags under his eyes. More like giant, three ton weights.

The buzzing of a welding torch, foreign to the hills and mountainsides of Vale, became all to familiar to her inhabitants. The worry was that the Condor wasn't going to be finished by the time November, or perhaps even _December_, came around. And the dreaded thoughts of snow and ice and frigid below-zero temperatures shocks everyone into sanity.

And to totally cap it off...

Finn had come back from his scouting run empty-handed.

Obviously, Piper was mad, but she didn't have the time to linger.

...

The year is a series of overlaps; there may be a day when fall becomes winter, winter becomes spring, and so forth. But the truth is, life is one gradual fading sequence, a turning of events that merge into one another. As there is no definite end to the river, and a clear cut beginning of the ocean, nor is there a beginning of the stars and an end of the galaxy, there is no end to summer, no beginning to fall. There are deltas, there are spirals, and there are days where tears and smiles mingle to create a beauty only humans can register and grab hold of.

No words can describe what the human heart is capable of holding.

But storytellers, we can try.

Piper cups her hand around her heart and sets it free, just as Vale held onto summer for one long and beautiful moment, before watching it slowly fade to the ground, asleep for another year. Summer sleeps, but where does Piper's heart go?

That is a question for...

...another moment.

For now, the bitter and remorseful truth that all things end is no longer a truth, but a lie. Nothing truly ends.

Maybe the bloody lipped fox, leaning over his prey, was incorrect. Perhaps Aerrow has a right to hope, a right to ponder the fact that infinity exists after all. What are we but pawns in the great chess game of being? We play small, insignificant parts in the greater balance of things. Links in a chain that has no end, but no beginning, either.

What has always been will always be.

It's mind boggling to think that there is something out there we have no capacity to understand. But it's true.

...

He sat beneath the apple tree and waited.

Day after day.

He waited for the little green orbs to grow and ripen and turn red. Waited for them to grow heavy and hang low, so that he could pull them down and...and...

Well, now, that's a secret.

The Dark Ace wondered why red always made him think of lips, when lips were never red at all. More of a rusty pink or a dark cinnamon. As were hers. They had no color, just a gradual merging, from flesh to flesh. Like summer to fall. Like apples to apples. And it was while this thought was bursting that the first apple of fall, it blushed fire across its own skin. Grew heavy with fruit and succulent juice.

Fell into his lap.

Newton thought of gravity.

Dark Ace thought of Piper.

...

Aerrow had been remembering the fox a lot, lately. Remembering, because many things in his life were ending.

_Nothing is forever_.

The painful thought that the animal had been right festered beneath his skin.

_Nothing is forever._

All the world seemed to be screaming, "ENDS!" Summer was dying, the grass was growing brittle, and the leaves were falling. His heart was flailing, a lesson in drowning. Aerrow had nothing to do, save oversee the Condor's construction, and think of her. She had the ability to make him burn so deeply with envy, anger, love...Envy, anger, love...Envy, anger, love...

_Nothing is forever._

A progression of bad things, from least horrible to most.

Envy, anger, love.

Envy bothers. Anger bleeds.

Love kills.

Reader, love kills.

...

Words spill out of his mouth, broken shards of glass, shattered pieces of incomplete explanations that linger painfully in the air.

He stubbornly persists, holding out with a shuddering arm the first apple of fall. She smiles tentatively before taking it, a huge amount of swelling joy and... and... and something else, burgeoning inside of her. She knows what it is. She knows the name of it, knows how it's spelled, knows the entomology behind the one syllable, knows...knows...how to dissect it, knows the grammar, the tenses...

Yet the one thing she doesn't know, as she touches the fruit to her lips and takes the first bite, is how to deal with it. How do you deal with love? How do you deal with something you can't touch, can't pin down, can't know and test before you delve into it? Piper _needs _a safety net. But love has no safety nets. He does not come with a manual, something to help her read him. She is clueless as to what she needs to do, in order to find out if he returns...

If he returns her feelings.

The Dark Ace smiles at her smile. She grins through a thin film of sticky juice, her white teeth flashing, pearls each one. The words have stopped to chop along through the air. Phrases between humans never truly flow; they stagger along, incompetent, incorrigible, bovine. If we could dispose of them, we would, but people just _can't _get along without not getting along. Babel-like equations, bricks that were built up for the sole purpose of being torn down, novels written and tossed in fires to light murders...

And a conversation between to would-be lovers.

...

_2. Ripples_

The second week of fall brought thunder. It did not, however, bring rain. Just growls and flashes of lightening, and this worried the people. The grass here and on the rolling hills was dry and burned easily; they knew, because they often used it for fuel. And so the constant thought of a possible fire waits.

Everyone misses the city, misses civilization in some way. The closeness of people, the convenience of needs, the noisy bursts that allow you to empty your mind. Yellow cafes with warm lighting and the smell if cigarette smoke.

Piper stands at terra's center and closes her eyes.

Inhale, exhale. Replace the bite with smoke, please.

Here, all her mind must be sharpened, all her senses heightened, so that she may take in every detail of this savage land. The first few weeks, when spring was still dewy and summer still warm, she had praised this terra, grown to love it. But waking up to the same hills every day, falling asleep to the same silence every night, makes her feel the need to change..._something_. Her thin arms are wrapped around herself, an action that used to bring security. She is not sure what it brings now.

For some horrible reason, her own touch is no longer enough.

...

September is not when the birch trees turn yellow, nor the oak trees red. The weather is still remotely fair, just drier, and perhaps the winds pick up a little more...the water has cooled...

On Monday, Stork hammered away at the Condor. Piper discovered a batch of dying dandelions, and found in a charred and barely legible book that their roots could be made into coffee.

On Tuesday, Aerrow and Finn went looking for food; they came back with nothing save a question: do rabbits taste good?

On Wednesday, the Dark Ace tossed a misshapen heap of what looked like meat in front of the boys and scowled. It was their dinner, it tasted fine, and no one asked what it was. Or what it _had _been, before he no doubt killed it.

On Thursday, everyone was throwing up, save the Dark Ace himself, who swore he hadn't intended to do anything to anyone. ("If only the FDA issued recalls on mystery meats.")

On Friday, most of them had recovered. Piper tested her dandelion coffee on the group. It was received well.

On Saturday, the ship was completed. Arguments ensue.

I'll save Sunday for later.

...

Sometimes...

My god, sometimes, we just completely forget that everyone's human.

If we could just _run_, one day. Just stand up from our beds, go outside, barefoot, and run. Scream! AAAAAAAAAAAAH! Jesus, just bawl like a newborn child, screech, roar, do whatever you want! MAKE NOISE! Let the damp pavement smack your skin! Let the rest of the world run with you! Oh, what would that sound like? Six and a half billion pairs of feet, hitting the ground. Six and a half billion mouths, acting as channels for a beautiful and insanely wild noise. We're born knowing how to scream, eh? Born knowing how to proclaim our existence to the world.

Oh, you ignorant people! Stand up on your feet and yell!

Make a human noise. Scream. Laugh. Fall to your knees and weep. Just don't talk.

Shhhh.

Do anything but talk. No words: Words separate us.

Kneel. Place your hands on the ground. Not pavement, not concrete, but dirt. Grass. Lay down. Forget whoever's watching. Be it raining, snowing, hailing... Human, lie down. Lie down and close your eyes. All of you, every single one. Our heartbeats will dive through the earth, merging at the core. Lie down with the rest of the world and listen to all of our bodies, shifting, rumbling, rolling.

Listen to humanity, doing what it does best: _living_.

...

Because there are some things that should not ever have to be repeated, I will not recount to you, in detail, the argument.

But I can describe it to you vaguely:

It was like a pair of jeans too small that rub against the back of your knees.

It was like underwear that had been starched.

It was like standing at the meat stalls in a market and breathing in the rich and gut-wrenching smell of rotting flesh.

It was like splinters, buried deep inside your heart.

It was all these things, and more. It was a debate over the fate of a human: whether he lived or died. Or whether he was even human at all. You. You are human. Aren't you? Would you like for two others to be debating your status? To be debating whether you are real or if you're just a monster, released from the closet?

I shouldn't like that at all.

Not one bit.

...

"Piper."

Muffled speak: "Gfo fawfay."

Translated: Go away.

"Piper. Don't be mad."

She lifted her head from its comfortable cradle in her arms. Her face was flush and red from crying. "What do you _want_, Finn?" She's a fruit basket: Her hair's all spiky like a pineapple, cheeks made of strawberries, eyes like tangerines, laced with cherry-juice.

"Aerrow's not angry."

"Why should he be?" she snapped. Brittle words. They broke into little pieces. Both of them stared at the fragments as they glittered on the ground. "It's not like he actually cares."

"And you do?" Finn whispers.

She stands. Her chest heaves. My, my, blending mode: no more fruits, just a big red smoothie. "You actually agree with him? With his sick and twisted idea of just _leaving _a person to die here? What kind of people are you!?"

Finn lurches forward, grabs her by the shoulders, and stares. She feels bony, knobbly, frail beneath his fingers. Almost like he has to be extra gentle, extra careful, else she'll crack. Touching her terrifies him. He lets go. "He...the Dark Ace...I don't think he needs to...to die. But I don't want to save him either." He bit his lip. "Look, I'm sorry, Piper. I'm sorry."

She turns away, huddled, hunched.

"God, Piper, what's the matter? Why do you care so much?" Finn whispers.

"Oh, hell, oh, hell, oh, hell..."

"Piper...Piper...Look, we're all just worried, okay?"

"Hell, no...hell..." She sits back down on the tree stump and is silent. Hiccup! Whoops. Quiet.

He turns around and leaves her there.

_CRUNCH._

Oh, dear. Looks like he's stepped on her word fragments. They pierce the skin and draw blood. He walks on.

Limping.

...

_I want to get DRUNK._

Strangely, that's all she's thinking after Finn leaves.

Piper wants to get drunk. Whoozy. Wants to plop down beneath something and drink until she can't drink no more. She has only tasted alcohol several times in her young life; after all, it's a three year wait until it's actually legal for her to get totally wasted. And yet...drunk. She wants to chug, and chug, and chug, and then go to sleep and forget everything. Forget that she just might maybe possibly oh hell no totally not maybe yes be in love with someone.

Hiccup! She's chocking on her own tears.

Hiccup! Chocking on air.

Hiccup! Deep breath in...don't release...hold, hold, hold...

_Pwaaaaaah_. Deflating balloon. Her shoulders sag. Branches crack behind her. Someone's coming. _Please don't let it be him. Please don't let it be--_

"Anyone there?"

Of course, because heaven's just sick like that, it's him. She debates answering and not answering.

Hiccup!

Oh, shoot.

His eyes meet hers, as he kneels beside her. "You...you alright?" he whispers. She nods. He can tell she's been crying. Caked, salty residue from tears is pasted to the sides of her face. Her cheeks are still faintly red. Her entire self is bent over and tired. Sloppy. Messy. She nods again, even though he didn't ask anything. Then nods some more. Then shakes her head vigorously. He sighs.

"They fixed the ship," she rasps.

"I noticed."

"They're not going to let you come."

Silence.

"I figured," he says at last.

More silence.

"Let's go to the pier," he suggests, all of a sudden, just out of nowhere. She looks at him strangely. He stands and holds out his arm. The shirt is ripped where she tore it open, many months ago. A pale white scar shows itself, a marker for where he was injured. Why doesn't _she _have a scar? He's pierced her heart enough. She's sure there must be a mark somewhere. She just hasn't found it yet...

Piper allows herself to be led out of the woods, to the lake. The late afternoon sun beats down on their shoulders. He sits, she sits. "They're leaving me here?"

"Yes."

"All winter?"

She doesn't want to answer, she doesn't...Oh, Piper! "Yes."

She was trying to explain. "I'm sorry, truly I am..." As if it was her fault. Goddamn it, it's not. She just needs someone to blame.

He sighed and turned around, facing the lake once more, those calm gray waters. She moved closer and wiped at her eyes. The words flowed up to her throat and were caught there, halfway between existing and not existing.

"It's fine, I suppose," he whispered. Then turned towards her and smiled, wavering, gentle...so _human_. If only Aerrow could've seen it. Seen the warmth in that smile. And then...all of a sudden, faster than a heartbeat, he's not on the pier anymore. _SPLASH!! _Into the lake. She lurches forward, horrified, a stream of worst-case-scenarios flying across her mind. A few frail bubbles rose to the surface, then popped. Again! _SPLASH!! _A wet hand reached up and jerked her down; her scream was muffled before it even left her mouth. Her first thought was, _AIR! _Her lungs were screaming. As soon as she'd broken through the surface and caught her breath, his eyes were the first thing she saw.

The water is bitter, the water is cold, the water is rejuvenating. Pop! Hangover gone.

"What was that for," was all she intended to say, but he wouldn't let her. No, he just had to go and ruin her lovely little sentence, her pretty little rebuke.

She got as far as the "fo-", then he cut her off.

Awful mean of him.

Grasping her waist and jerking her to him, his lips stopped hers from moving most effectively. She felt the back of the pier's leg ram into her shoulder blades, felt his hands upon her body, felt something inside break down and lock up all at once. A demonic little dance took place inside the back of her head, a fiery little thing that made this moment burn. The water was so cold, it was hot; pinpricks rushed through her body. Or was that from his touch?

She had positively no _idea _what to do. Except he pulled back all of a sudden and saved her the trouble of wondering.

They both blinked. Temporary blindness. She wants to say something, she just doesn't know _what_. What words could describe this?

"I'm sorry," he whispers. The cold laps around them, sucks them down. She shudders. "I'm sorry." He says it again, louder, clearer.

Swallow. "Why?" And then she touches him, right on the cheek, with a slippery hand. Leans forward and presses her lips to his. Shockwaves fly through her head. _Why? Jesus, that's a great question. Why?_

_Shit._

Her shirt was clinging to her...Or rather, the water was clinging to her, and her shirt was clinging to the water. She was clinging to _him_, but just what was _he _clinging to? Not her, never her.

She felt heavy, weighed down, yet light...yet...yet so light, as if she could just disappear.

He backs away from her. Clambers up the bank. She pulls herself up and sits next to him.

Piper and the Dark Ace.

It's a pretty little picture: all wet and smelling of each other and lake water, mud smeared across their behinds. They are caked in their own bodies, and it feels wonderful.

...

Reader, you will remember that Piper, she set her heart free.

Where did it go?

Reader, you tell me.

...

Only earth can make a tree.

Only earth, only nature, only something far greater than _us _can make something as marvelous as a tree.

Have you...Have you ever stood outside as the sun sets, sometime around mid-October, when the sky is nothing but a great big piece of fabric, drawn tight? The trees are nothing more than cut paper shadows, stood up. They shift and they merge, leaves moving somewhere between what is real and what is not real. They are made of paper, yet they are not flat. You could hug them.

They smell like _trees_. Trees smell like trees! I know that sounds quite pathetic, but what else in the world smells like a tree? What can I compare that odor to?

Sculptors can chisel them out of marble, or bend them out of clay. Painters can attempt to nail them to a canvass with a brush. Poets can scribble their features down, writers can try to make them appear out of nothing. A storyteller can whisper one and have you believe it is real.

But Christ, only God can make a tree.

...

Their fingers remained tangled together for a brief and wonderful moment, before she pulled away and closed her eyes.

The two forms created an unruly blemish. Like a splotch of ink on a plain white canvas. The elephant in the room is that they chose _now_. They chose now, just when she is about to leave, to reach out and hold hands.

Jesus.

When will we ever learn?

...

There is hell, in hello.

But it belongs in goodbye.

...

_3. A voice in your ear..._

You think you love her, but do you?

She was inside your hands for only a few moments, and her mouth covered yours for even less. You so wanted to do more, and you told yourself it was out of respect that you didn't enter her body, there and then, with the lake to mask your intentions. But maybe it wasn't respect. Maybe it was fear. Ever think of that, idiot? Human? Thing?

You have whispered her name as you slept, have fisted her midnight colored locks in your imagination, and you have stroked her bare skin in your dreams. But when the sun rises, she does nothing but sit beside you. She lets you inside the doors of her heart, never her being. Piper tells you secrets. It is her voice, not her tongue, that strokes the rim of your ear. Her tone, never her hands, that encircle your body and raise bumps on bare flesh.

And often, you believe it is because she trusts you that she tells you such things. That it was as good as making love with words, what the two of you did.

Yet how do you know she wouldn't have spoken to anyone who would listen? How do you know you aren't just lying brittle little lies? You've never loved a woman before. You have no _idea _what it feels like. Your eyes only find her neck, her breasts, her thighs. But you can't bring yourself to look her squarely in the face, unless you're kissing her. What is this, then? Love, or lust?

Her secrets tickle your brain. You think that it would have been better if the both of you...

had just kept your mouths shut.

And now it's time to say goodbye.

...

What do you want from him?

Do you want him to follow you, to argue for you, to die for you? You wanted to need him, you believed you needed him, but the need was less for his heart and more for his ear. You sit beside the ship, you sit beside your commander, and you briefly avert your eyes towards the hills where you know someone is waiting for you. It wasn't anything more than a minute, a culmination of moments; what else did you expect? A great romance, a dance of passion, out here where nature, never love, reigns supreme? The leaves have painted themselves in coffins of yellow, red, and brown. Don't think for a moment you and your friends and...and _him_, are any exception to the rule. And the rule is this: Time will never stop.

You can wish. You can desire. You can stare into your crystals and hope to see the future. But he is and always will be the Dark Ace. If it were a different time, a different place, and perhaps you were a little older, he a little younger...then something could happen. You don't know if this is true, or if this is something you did out of desperation. Look at Aerrow. He's head over heels for you.

Why don't you want him? Because he doesn't listen. You tell yourself he doesn't listen. And the Dark Ace does?

This could all be a lie. This could all be placed behind you.

See? You're inside the ship, now. You're taking off. Leave the kiss, the lake, the sound of his body against yours...leave it all back on the terra. Vale is gone, a bittersweet ending. He's there, too. He's _on the ground...and you're in the SKY..._

But all you can bring yourself to think about are his eyes,

and the way he looked at you when he said goodbye.


	8. a passion for the circular

_4. tears grow flowers, too_

_breathe in the perfume of their skin_

_the palette of color in their eyes_

_the musk of their hair_

And if you've ever loved a person, you know what I am speaking about.

Take your beloved's body; make it a picture. I ask you this: If you were a dot of paint, where would you like to rest?

Their eyes, their nose, their hair? Lips, teeth, neck, cheeks, ear?

Breast, collarbone, arms, shoulder, hands, fingers?

Waist, hips, legs, feet, toes?

Soul?

_listen to the silence of their speech_

_the noise of their silence_

_the song of their smile._

_...  
_

"So what about that 'Heart of the terra' crap Stork's book was talkin' about?" Finn grunted. They were all situated inside the bridge, each to their own post. Aerrow stood directly beside the controls, eyes on the sky in front of them. Junko had his giant feet propped up on the steel table, ready to jump up and make an emergency repair when necessary. Radarr had himself looped around one of the chair legs and was fast asleep. Finn found himself against a wall, chewing his fingernails. Stork was at the controls.

Only Piper was out of place. Normally, she'd be at the table, brushing Junko's bovine feet off of the surface and replacing them with her wafer-thin maps. Or next to Aerrow and Stork, helping them navigate.

But today, she was at one of the de-activated guns, curled up on the seat, staring out the window. Vale was getting smaller, and smaller, and smaller...

_So small._

_Invisible._

"Forget it." Aerrow turned to the sharpshooter and frowned. "It's just a bunch of...Well, like you said. Crap."

"I still think--" Stork began to warn, but he was cut off by Finn.

"Ah-hem! Now is _not _the time for pessimism. A'ight?"

...

The most striking thing about being left alone was the silence. And that was something he really hadn't expected.

_I suppose, _the Dark Ace thought, _When winter creeps around, it'll be even quieter._

He had searched the hillside for a vantage point to watch the Condor leave. A boulder was good enough. The Dark Ace sat down and stared, stared as the blue and silver streak disappeared behind the clouds. He never expected there'd be a day he regretted watching that ship fly off, but then again, if there was one thing he'd learned from his time on Vale, it was to never say never.

A half smile crept onto his lips as he slid back down to the meadow and lay down on the brittle grass. It crackled as his weight was placed upon it.

The first night of October slunk on in, but he didn't know. There weren't any notches on sticks or sundials made of branches to tell him the time. Just the sky and an awful lot of stars.

The dirt clung to the fabric of his clothing. He sat up and blinked rapidly. The palace? Cyclonia? Talons? The words were even dryer than the earth beneath him. Unused and rusty. They had been replaced by others. Pier. Lake. Apples. _Piper_.

The wheel was spinning, faster and faster, before his eyes. Making him dizzier and dizzier with each passing turn. His head felt fit to burst with something. Rage? He opened his mouth to scream and no noise came out. Despair, then. No, not despair. He had to _do _something; despair made you curl up and sigh.

Sadness. Regret. The syllables tasted like rain, pale and watery. Thin.

A layer of moonlight was sliding down the side of his face.

It looped past his lips and to his tongue. The saltiness of it touched taste buds and made them scream.

The rest of a moonbeam scraped the ground.

Perhaps to water the flowers

of a spring still so_ painfully _far away.

...

_Piper..._

_Piper..._

Her eyes sprang open.

Sweat all over her. She remembered distantly the feverish night in the meadow. Fresh from the desert, the heat had left her body reluctantly. Her throat was choked. Someone had stuck a gasoline-drenched rag down her esophagus. Her breath had come out ragged, barely perceptible.

Piper breathed on the window, fogging it up. Her dark and quivering hands wiped the mist away, to reveal the stars.

She was back in her room. The sheets were charred and dusty. They'd all need new ones as soon as they reached a supply depot.

The entire ship was filled with the odor of fire. Even though the flames had died down months ago, it still...still...When she pressed her face into her pillow, longing for the smell of home, she found only ashes, with the barely noticeable hint of wildflowers and milky breezes. Golden desert dust and the algae that grew on the surface of the lake. Fish oil. Apple skin.

"Let me go back, please..."

It was whispered through tears.

"God, let me go back..."

A knock on her door. She quickly wiped her eyes and slid off the broken pieces of bed. With a punch and a hiss, the doors swept open.

"Hey." Aerrow looked at her sleepily. He had bags beneath his eyes. "Are you alright?"

_Tell him the truth, Piper. Just this once. Stop lying to everyone._

_Truth, truth...Honesty...Spill your guts on the floor..._

"Yeah, Aerrow. I'm fine."

Another lie.

The doors closed. She collapsed back on the rickety bed and felt it sag beneath her paper-thin body. The yellowed pillow she kept tight against her chest, as if suffocating herself would keep the tears at bay. _Send me back to him._

Maybe saying his name would help, darling.

But she couldn't.

Dark Ace wasn't his name.

So she told him something directly, and wished he would hear her.

"I need you."

But he _didn't _hear, and he didn't know.

...

Midnight. The clocks are broken, yet broken clocks are always right twice a day. They were jammed at noon exactly, which was when the Condor crashed.

And so, noon. Midnight.

The moon was a spider's leg. Growing, growing, growing.

"Stork?"

"Aaaahwwwwah." The pilot yawned. "Yep?"

"Where are we?"

"I don't _know_, but chances are, we're going in circles. I'm telling you, Vale is haunted, and no one gets off that terra! It's a miracle we haven't crashed yet."

Aerrow sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine what _her _fingers would feel like against his flesh, then spoke.

"We'll wait and see, Stork..."

"Ung-hung."

...

_5. Fontanel_

Ah...

We are humans.

I realize this as I tell this story. I realize it for what feels like the millionth time, yet it is still as healing and as painful as the first.

And it is because we are humans that we are so blind. We are to be pitied, for we are doomed to always want what we cannot have. And even if you did...even if you could...have _everything_...you would not be happy, because then you would want nothing. Smile, humans! We must always smile. We must always have faith. When one has faith, one is able to do anything except do everything.

Ah...

We are humans.

And yet, we are all only barely _human_.

...

A miracle. He wakes up to a miracle.

There's frost, all around him. The grass crackles when he sits up. Little crystals cling to blades of grass, to leaves, entrapping them in coffins of ice. The entire world is in a giant, glass coffin! Including him. He stands and walks around, feeling the fragility of this phenomenon. Come noon, the frost will be gone, but he will relish it until then. A smile manages to inch its way to his mouth, an idea manages to inch its way to his head:

_What would _she _have thought of this?_

_...  
_

When a baby is born, it has more bones than an adult. They eventually merge and harden, but for a little while...babies are complete. And then they lose a part of themselves...

They have, on their skulls, fissures. Fontanels. Cracks that are softer than the rest of the head, therefore allowing for expansion. Expansion! If you pressed your fingers to those fissures, those cracks, you can feel the blood pounding through them. They are the reason why the mind may still grow, in youth. And then they merge, they blend, they grow taut and tight. Like a gate slamming shut.

Does love, too, have a fontanel? Does it have room to grow when it is born, but as it ages, it becomes...closed off? Is that why, unless we are _truly _in love with another, things grow old? Grow boring? There is no longer a place for us to touch and feel the life move. But true love...always grows.

Press your hand to the fontanels of your heart, and feel the love course through it.

Is it not beautiful?

Is it not fragile?

Is it not _yours_?

...

When autumn swings around, you receive a bone-jarring feeling inside your chest. It's a heavy and painful sensation, as if your heart is clenching within itself with guilt and discomfort. But before you start blaming yourself for half the calamities of the world, allow me to explain:

It is merely yearning.

But what is it you yearn?

Warmth?

Sunlight?

Green grass and blue skies?

Autumn and winter cause you to turn within yourself for answers. We do not mind picking out the faults of others; it is when we are faced with our own that it becomes painful. Like a rabid wolf biting itself in fury, a human will scratch and itch at a heart that had no real problem in the first place. Too many times are the remedies worse than the disease.

Why is it so hard for us, I wonder, to realize we aren't perfect? Why is it so difficult? Why must we always pull and prod, stitch and rearrange ourselves? We slather chemicals over our bodies, we spend so much money on clothing and shoes, just to be appreciated. Accepted. Looked up to. Is it so hard for people to look at each other as people?

I suppose it is a paradox, to wish for perfection, all the while bemoaning it. But this is a paradoxical world.

Summer allows you to look outward at the world.

Autumn makes your gaze turn inwards.

So reader, look inside. Do you find your soul ugly? Sad? Pained?

Why do you chastise yourself so?

Why do you see beauty in the world so easily...

...yet make it so hard to see beauty inside yourself?

...

She was curled up next to the window, her mind finding solace in solitude.

The door was locked and no one felt like knocking.

Piper's knees were drawn up to her chest, and her arms were wrapped around her legs. She was smiling faintly at memories. She was turning backwards once more.

She had awoken to a stiff feeling on her cheeks; when she reached up, her hands found the caked residue of tears. Had she really cried when she was asleep? It was possible; it was more than possible. Her fingers had wiped the grime away, and then she'd sat up and begun to watch the sky move slowly past the ship. Or did the ship move past the sky?

Or did it not really matter?

_Not a terra in view_, she thought to herself. _The air looks so clean. What if I open the window, just a peek? Maybe my lungs won't feel so horrid. _She mustered all her strength and pushed the glass away from her. A ribbon of wind twined through the gap, filling her nose and mouth and mind. Her head started to clear. She was drunk on freshness, high on serenity. Nothing else mattered.

The window slammed shut.

The wind had closed it.

Piper lay back down and took another deep breath. Then choked.

The air inside was dusty and ashen. _What was the point? _she conceded. For every moment of bliss, she received an hour of pain. For every drop of love, she drank a tub of remorse.

The world was deathly quiet.

...

When noon came swinging around Terra Vale, the Dark Ace discovered he was hungry.

Every movement he made towards finding food felt stiff. Hampered. As if he was pulling an invisible weight behind him as he walked.

Many years ago, before he entered the service of Cyclonia, he had visited a distant relative on a farming terra. The rustic image of a farmer standing behind his team of four horses as they labored at a plow was forever embedded into the young man's mind. The blade had managed to get itself stuck, and the animals were groaning and moaning as they struggled to pull it loose. The sight of the four horses, their breathing harsh and ragged, heads swinging erratically from side to side, sweat glistening on their coats, flashed across his mind as he climbed up the hills.

He walked.

And walked.

And walked.

Even after he'd stopped, he was still walking.

...

There are few places on this earth that are truly beautiful.

They are untouched by man's plague-like need to destroy all that is deemed un-necessary. They have somehow managed to retain their natural beauty, their indescribable power.

Like the stretches of beach by the northern sea. White sand, green ocean, flat slates of blue sky. Pieces of rotting wood that were once parts of boats.

Or the desert. Golden dirt. Barbed cacti. An arching curve of azure that cannot be called anything save heaven.

These places are truly permanent. They have obtained permanence, because they matter. Humans? Do we matter?

To ask ourselves this question is not fair. We must question, instead, the world.

Sit down somewhere beautiful...and listen...to the sea, to the silence, to the heat. You just might hear a response...a reply...

...a truth...

...

_5. Circular Motions in a Circular Sky_

The ship was groaning.

Stork grumbled moodily at no one in particular from the controls. "We're almost out of fuel," he said. "We're almost out of fuel."

Aerrow raised a tired eyebrow in response. "Really?"

"And since Piper is...unavailable...and Finn can't read a map to save his life...it's also fair to say we're lost."

"Oh, sure, blame it all on me!" Finn barked in self-defense. "'Finn can't read a map...' Oh, that's just mean."

A quiet chirp came from the doorway as Radarr urged everyone to quiet, that Piper was sleeping, that nothing was to be gained from arguing. But no one was in the mood for deciphering his little game of charades right now. No one cared.

Stork sighed and resumed his quiet and incoherent grumbling.

...

She woke up and was standing in front of the door.

Piper debated going out their and continuing her job, as if nothing had ever happened, against staying in here and mulling the circumstances over some more. Sighing, she decided to stay a little longer. She felt ashamed, as if she were practicing some act of betrayal...or cowardice. Sitting on the bed, her hands spread across the sheets...

And found something hard beneath them.

Throwing the charred blankets aside, her eyes clapped onto the fisherman's journal. She must have had it beneath her shirt when she boarded...and it had fallen out as she slept. She never did finish reading it. Her tired fingers, restrained by the cold, wrapped around the slick oilskin and flipped the book open to a random page towards the back.

_I think, _the man wrote, _that we will be leaving soon. The mine has dried up, the lake is devoid of fish...Maria is rarely ever used, now. I think it is high time I skipped town, in any case. I'm on the next ship out of here._

_We have ravaged this land beyond obvious repair. I fear the earth may never recover. It as almost as if she has bled. I remember the week I spent in the desert... and the flash flood that occurred while I was there. The water picked up red silt and such along the way; it looked like blood as it washed down the gully and over the side of the terra._

She turned a few more pages, half closed eyes reading the words patiently.

_Leaving Vale today. All of us._

_We won't look back._

_Naturally, I can't take Maria with me...but I can't bear to leave her on the surface of the lake, to molder..._

_I will cut a hole in her planking and watch her sink._

_The sky is a lovely blue. Yet it feels as if it should be raining._

_The temperature is at seventy-four degrees Fahrenheit. It is fair weather for fishing. Who knows? I just might continue this noble occupation after I leave. _

_It is the first day of spring. I am at the pier--_

Then there was a long streak of ink, followed by dark blotches. The rest of the book was hopelessly empty.

He had left. They had all left...just like her. Yet he had been happy. He hadn't looked back. He'd sunk Maria, sunk the journal, discarded his job...

But her circumstance was different! Piper launched herself to her feet. "So what if it's different," she grumbled. She may have left her heart on that terra...but her friends needed her. And in a way, she still needed them.

Glancing out the window, her eyes settled on the darkness. She then punched the button by her door. The two halves sprang open; she stepped into the warm hallway and towards the bridge. All the others had their backs towards her. They looked helpless. Tired. Alone.

Managing a smile, Piper greeted them.

"Hey."

They turned around, and they grinned.

...

This storyteller realizes that her story is running dry.

This storyteller begs your pardon, and wishes to digress once more.

Please, bear with me.

This digression holds meaning, just like all the others.

Please, listen, not to me...

But with me.

For I, too, am hearing this tale...

...for the very first time.

...

A circle is never ending, never beginning. It has been an enigma to us for generations.

We have found beautiful things because if it, made wonderful things with it. Set it on an axle, you have a wheel. Paint it white and throw it to the sky, you have the moon. Set it on fire, you hold the sun...

We have a passion for the infinite. We yearn for, as I mentioned earlier, what we cannot have. We cannot have immortality. Yet we manage, somehow, to touch it. And our fingers come away with golden tips.

The sky, the world, the earth, is a circle. It spins. It doesn't stop. One day, it might...One day, it will...

But the concept of the sky, the dream of the sky, is round.

You can start at one point, and you can end there, too.

...

Piper's eyes were glued to the periscope.

The Dark Ace's were glued to the clouds.

She saw a terra.

He saw a ship.

...

"Guys..." she whispered, worried yet jubilant all at once. "Guys..."

"What is it?" Aerrow stood. "What's wrong, Piper?"

Her response was to jam the periscope into his hands. He looked through the lenses--

"DAMN!"

...

A circle.

No beginning, no end.

Where you start

is where you finish.

And let me remind you, reader...

This story is _far _from over.

* * *

Hoo ha! An update! I worked pretty damn hard on this chapter. Pretty damn hard. Hope you liked it. Hope it wasn't too short. Hope...hope...

You'll review.


	9. o fire o smoke

_6. November_

No.

It couldn't be Vale.

No.

It couldn't be.

No.

It couldn't.

No.

It.

No.

...

When he looked up and saw the Condor, he was certain it was a dream. After all, why else would the ship be hovering daintily above the meadow, about to land? Why else would it be touching down gracefully, the ramp lowering? No, it wasn't real...

He turned back into the woods and decided he needed more food.

He was obviously starting to hallucinate.

...

Stork brought the ship down. They were almost out of fuel and it was necessary that they land.

Aerrow swore and cursed and kicked at the table.

Piper sat at the periscope still, her hands glued to the handles, frame quivering. "Did we land? Are we back?"

No one answers. She is reaffirming an ugly truth. Junko sighs and grumbles, "Do we have to have berries for dinner _again_?"

What is for dinner is the least of their worries.

Meanwhile, Aerrow punches the button that lowers the ramp and steps back onto the brittle grass. Everything is on fire, the trees wrapped in glorious flames of red and gold. The sky is water, water ready to fall upon the heat and make it cold. It is the coldest blue he has ever seen. He turns around and heads back into the ship, and he announces,

"The weather's going to start gettin' frigid. We need warmer clothing."

Piper shrugs, her first movement in forever. "We don't have any cloth to sew with. So unless you wanna go 'Rambo' style and start hunting, we should probably just make a big-ass fire and live with that for a while."

Her gaze is penetrating, her attitude crisp. Her fingers are still wrapped tightly around the bars. She is restraining herself from running into the valley to find _him_. Aerrow sees it in her eyes, sees it in the tightening of her jaw. He sighs and grunts, "I'm going to go look for some firewood."

She stands and grabs his hand, leans up, and kisses him on the cheek. She can feel Finn grinning at the two of them from behind her, yet she doesn't care.

Aerrow looks at her pitifully.

"Firewood," she snaps, letting go of him. He nods and disappears down the ramp. Footsteps.

"What was that for, Piper?"

She turns and looks into Finn's eyes, those deep pools of truth-searching blue.

"I don't know. It doesn't matter. Nothing."

Three answers.

None of them true.

...

The breeze is biting at bare shoulders. She stands on the Condor's hastily re-welded balcony and stares at the mountains. Some of the pines have turned golden from lack of rain and disease, yet most of them are still deep green. Over the mountains are the mines, and it is there that she wishes she could go. To the darkness of the caves, where she cannot see or feel anything. There, she was numb.

Here she is just cold.

She will try her best to love Aerrow, to give him the affection he has earned and so richly deserves. He needs her like the tide needs a shore, needs her because he just has to settle somewhere. All his life, he has wandered aimlessly. She will be his rock, his anchor. She cannot explain to him that she can weigh him down and not be his lover at the same time...But he refuses to have it any other way.

What should she do? Run away from both men, or choose one?

She can never give Aerrow her heart.

It is somewhere else, after all.

...

_Clunk._

The firewood is thrown onto a bare patch of earth. Aerrow ignites it with a fragment of a Burner, then throws some pine needles and dry leaves onto it for kindling. The warmth that is emitted is sweet and golden; he sits by it and stares into its core.

Dinner. What can they do for dinner?

Piper is nearby; he calls out to her.

"Hey!"

She turns. "What?" Pause. Was her tone too harsh? "What?" This time it is softer. She walks over and sits down beside him.

"You still have any of those Paralyzers?"

She nods.

"Maybe we can go hunting."

She nods again, then stands.

"I'm going to go scouting. Maybe find some deer."

He is suspicious, but part of him decides to trust her. It is the part that wants her to be his, that wants her to become so entwined with his own soul that they are inseparable. How else can they love each other? He can't think of her as a sister anymore. She is too beautiful, too kind...too _wantable._

She cuts a strong figure as she disappears over the next rise and is gone.

...

There are complex patterns of tracks, weaving in and out of each other. The cloven imprints of deer are old, heading steadily towards the lake and its alluring smell of water. Criss-crossing here and there are the fresher remnants of wolves, their distinctive paw-prints pressed deep into the mushy clay. The scent of death-to-come floods her nostrils, which flare almost immediately.

Here the light is ethereal, filtered smoothly by an ocean of fire-like leaves. It smatters the ground, stars on earth, pools of un-touchable beauty that break so easily; all she has to do is hold her hand over it and it is gone; where did it go, whey does nothing beautiful last; _why must love be so complicated--_

The grass behind her rustles; she hears breathing and smells disappointment. Her body shudders; he is asking her _why _with nothing more than a look.

"The hills. Tonight."

That is all she says. Then waits for him to leave.

The leaves rustle and he is gone; the light shimmers for a moment before being replaced with shadow.

...

"The deer have moved. They're at the southern end, about three hours from us..."

Her report is bleak. Aerrow shifts his weight nervously from one foot to the other.

"How many Paralyzers?"

"Seventeen."

"Enough?"

Piper shrugs. "I've never taken down a deer before."

Finn leans against the Condor's battered hull and smirks. "Hey, if we can take down a Leviathan..."

...

The skimmers have not been used in months; their energy is low and the terrain is rough.

Riding is out of the question.

"Stork, do you want to come with?"

"No thanks, man, I'm allergic to raw meat..."

...

The light will leave soon. They have to hurry if they want dinner. They have to hurry if Piper wants to make her appointment.

Over the rise, down the slope, cross the stream, smell the life. Smell the life, smell the world...smell the dying...Frost coats the earth every morning, crystalline reminders that snow isn't so far away. It is already November, and the world is swirling around them like a fog of remorse. Does it remember the summer? Does it remember when the sun sparkled instead of oozed?

Finally they look up and they see.

The buck is a veritable mountain, and the thick winter coat he wears cannot hide his muscle. There is _meat _on him. Finn raises his crossbow. The Paralyzers are jammed into it and they vibrate, ready to be fired--fire--me--

"Wait!" A hiss and a hand pressing the bow down. "He's too big to take down with one...We'll have to find a smaller one. The herd can't be far. We have to sneak around him..."

Piper begins to move; the others follow while Finn frowns.

Just around the hill is a small copse of trees, and just beside the trees is a small group of deer. There are does and they are heavy, eating like mindless machines, feeding the young that squirm wantonly within their bellies, waiting for a nonexistent spring to call them to earth.

The humans shift about and they blink oh, oh, oh--

oh look the earth is bleeding.

...

_7. blood on my hands_

He shoots and the doe falls. A ripple of blue energy shimmers across her body, causes her to convulse, her eyes bulge, her heart contract. Spasms cascade through her muscle before they cease and she collapses.

_"Finn, NO!"_

The other deer run, footfalls indecisive; the buck is missing and he is nowhere to be seen.

"Finn...Finn...You shouldn't have..._She was pregnant..._"

The blond puts the crossbow away and frowns. "What?"

"You should've taken the young male..."

"What?!"

"She had a _baby_..."

...

The shot was in her chest; her heart is Paralyzed and she has stopped running. Her eyes are glassy-huge, unfeelingly looking up at her murderers. Legs tangled together. Muscles taut. Ears sagging. Luckily it is not summer, or else the flies would have begun to swarm.

And her belly bulges.

Piper places a shivering hand on the doe's abdomen, feels the knobby bulges of knees and nose and spine. Two heartbeats silenced; _Finn how could you?_

He is quiet as he stands, and he stares down. Mumbles,

"Dude, we can't eat her."

...

Night. No. Night.

Dinner:

None.

"I'm going for a walk..."

"Sure."

Quiet--_it is so goddamn quiet_--oh.

Oh, there is blood on his hands.

...

_8. Bend But Not Break_

He is already there; she half expects him to snap, "You're late." But all he does is bow his head to her earthly glow and wish that she could love him.

"I'm sorry."

"Apologies won't do anything," he mumbles.

"I don't even know your name..."

"Should you?"

She swallows, says, "It's not...We can't..."

The moon sways like an empty cradle. Who stole the child? Who stole her innocence?

_Him_.

He feels guilty and so he should. The painful throbbing in his chest is the result of two hearts at war. The one that is his snaps with frightening ferocity at the one that is hers, that she gave to him so blindly and so willingly. What has he done? What has he done? How. Did. He. Do it?

"I need to be with him, now."

He knows what she means and nods.

"I understand."

Children should love children; that is the way the world works.

Piper turns and she runs

runs

runs

runs

run

run

run

ru

ru

ru

ru

r

r

_r_

_r_

_r_

_r_

_r_

_r_

_r_

_u_

_n_

_s._

_...  
_

Aerrow is awake and waiting. She slips easily into his arms and buries her face in the crook of his neck. Inhales his smell.

Remembers it.

"Why are you still up?"

"I wanted to make sure..."

His eyes are worried; it is a good thing that she cannot see them. She is too busy sighing into his shirt.

"Yes?"

"I wanted to make sure you were coming back."

She suddenly pulls away, looks into his tightly drawn face. Lunges forward and jams her lips to his. Kisses him so voraciously he just might collapse. He holds her, terrified for an instant, before kissing back, his brain melting down to a pile of _i love you_. He doesn't feel her tense jaw, doesn't see the spiderweb of veins bulging in her neck, doesn't notice her heartbeat as it shudders with dishonesty. She is trying, trying so hard...

The contact breaks with a crack; she sighs and ignores the fact that her soul is shattered.

...

_9. A certain slant of light_

The roses have died and the mountains are capped with ice; the whole world is waiting silently for winter.

Sleeping:

-a hungry one

-a nervous one

-a shivering one

-a broken one

-a satisfied one

-a bloodied one

-and a one who is not sure who he is.

Slowly, spiderwebs of ice creep stealthily across the lake, until the center has been reached and they radiate in all directions, a perfect sheet. Diving downwards, towards fish that have buried themselves in the darkest depths of the lake. The ice is thick, solid, cold. Opaque. Dark clouds, smoky fogs, and imperfect snowflakes huddle like primordial beasts in the corners of the sky, moving quickly until they have all gathered above Vale.

And then...slowly, quietly, gently...

December arrives and it begins to snow.

**End of Part Three: Fall**

**

* * *

**

OMIGOD that was a crappy chapter, but it was the best I could do for now. School's a bitch.


	10. the glass coffin

YES. An update. Finally.

* * *

**Part Four: Winter**

_1. Solstice_

The shortest day of the year lingered, an unwanted shadow, over Terra Vale and her inhabitants. Snow blanketed the ground...No, more like drenched it. Seeped down with shivering fingers. You could call it heaven or you could call it hell. Could call her angel or call him devil.

This puzzle of a season whispered threads of death and beauty all over the earth, whispered strands of shaking laughter and crooning screams.

The white doves sat in the snow like sacrifices, each one.

...

Seven pairs of quivering eyes spread open, sliding across glistening eyeballs that took in the first strands of dawn. Hands tangled with grass and blankets, bodies rolled, breaths quickened.

"...Morning."

"Morning."

Stand.

Stretch.

An ancient routine, repeated with dull monotony.

Which is broken by a scream.

...

Scurry, run, hurry, run...

...

In hindsight, perhaps I should not have taken us here.

Winter is dangerous.

Trees are made of shadows and the innocent snow hides ghastly deaths.

Reader, have you ever seen red on white, blood on ice?

You do not want to.

The white makes the red all the worse.

...

"What's wrong?!"

Piper is on her knees, clutching her ribs, sobbing at a patch of cold metal.

Arms wrap themselves, flesh-colored ribbons, around her shaking frame. "You alright?"

Bruises indicate a fall.

A rumpled heap of covers indicate a nightmare.

Screams indicate that it was about death.

She grabbed the first person who entered her line of vision--it happened to be Finn--and moaned desperately into his pajama'd shoulder. "Oh, my god...Oh, my god...Don't go away..."

Finn, for the first time in his life, hugged her back with no shame. "C'mon, Piper. It was just a dream."

"Someone's going to die...!"

"No one's dying."

"Someone's leaving..."

"No one's leaving."

Aerrow watched, desperate and helpless, from the sagging doorway. Why couldn't he move? Why couldn't he hold her as Finn was: Easily, as a friend? Every time he touched her skin, he burned with WANT. He wanted her more than he could ever put into words. The feel of her chest against his and her face in the crook of his neck and her breath--

...

The ship reverberated with her yell; the Dark Ace heard it from where he had been sleeping. His head was frozen to the ground, glued there by ice and snow and silly pain.

By the time he pried himself free, her sobs had subsided.

His breaths were evenly spaced, calm and smooth.

This was not the way he had expected her to greet him.

Standing, to find himself covered with ice, and chilled to the bone, he lifted his eyes to the pasty-white sky. Like a white dish-cloth, thrown with runny blue jeans into the washer.

Wrung out to dry.

Bird-splattered, cloud broken.

An unseemly metaphor for his ripped up soul and disheveled heart.

...

Had she been home, she'd be curled up before a fire. Outside would be magic.

The warm glow of the flames would wrap around her, a blanket.

Yet here, she was lost. Searching for something that had been missing for far too long. She felt so much like a child, so torn between right and easy. The flowers had died where they stood and the trees had withered, naked without the warmth of branches. The ugly and surreal summer, the naive spring, the matured fall, it had all led to this: pale and cold and empty death.

"Finn?"

She was still holding onto his arm, long after the others had gone. Sitting side by side on the cold floor, they stared at the ceiling together.

"Yuh-huh."

"Don't ever lose me."

Silence.

"I wouldn't dream of it, Piper."

He means every word.

...

Stork stares, quiet, out over the white-ness-osity.

His eyes search for color but find none.

Just black and white and gray.

Odd. He should be loving this. It's dark and it's lonely, bleak and hopeless.

But for some strange reason, he itches blindly for something bright.

"How hard..."

Stork looks up. Junko is sitting at the table, placid and calm.

"How hard do you think it would be, to grow a flower in this weather?"

The Merb sags. The Wallop stiffens.

Stork considers it for a few long moments, before mumbling a quick and truthful answer.

"...Hard," he says."

"Wanna try?" Junko blurts.

They both stare vacantly at each other, before the unexpected reply springs forth.

"Sure."

...

Out on the ice slathered roof, Aerrow and Radarr sit side by side.

Silence reigns supreme.

"Well, here we are."

"Reep."

"Cold."

"Reep."

"Tired."

"Reep."

"Hungry."

_"Reep_."

"I hear ya."

...

_2. Mirror, mirror, on the lake_

I feel sorry. Desperately so.

But we can't leave, not now. We are glued to the ice and we must wait for the world to melt.

I promise, spring will come.

Sooner or later, flowers will bloom.

It is always darkest before the dawn.

Take my hand. We're in this together.

Stories rise and fall.

Watch.

Wait.

...listen.

...

"Do you think there are any seeds on the ship?"

Stork and Junko peruse the Condor for anything that could bloom. At the moment, Merb and Wallop would settle for turnip seeds, if only they'd _appear_.

"Maybe we should ask Piper."

"...No."

"Why not?"

"Piper's sad right now."

"All the more reason to grow a flower and make her feel better!"

Junko bounds away. Stork admires his endless reserves of energy.

They arrive at the supply closet and open the door, listening to the frozen joints scream as they turn. Junko turns on the light and they glance inside. It is filled with junk of all kinds, nameless in their miscellany. Stork sighs and steps forward.

"Let's get lookin'."

...

He watches the ship from afar, waiting in a predatory stance.

The two hearts inside him are no longer fighting. They are worn out, tired, sleeping side by side. Not out of love, but out of shame.

He reaches deep within himself and pulls her failing soul out. Holds it in his hands and feels it shudder in the cold.

Kisses it.

Sets it free.

_Go home._

_..._

At around noon, when the white glare of sun on snow makes everything become frightfully clear, she puts on her sunglasses and sneaks out of the ship.

She swears no one sees her go.

But she is wrong.

The lake is no longer the thing of beauty it was during the summer. It is cloaked in steely ice, a restricting cage for its sleeping residents. Cautious, she places her foot on the surface. Then leans forward. It does not crack.

Piper sets both feet upon the ice. She is standing. She is firm.

Sliding towards the center, she stares up at the great yellow sun. She dances beneath the spotlight.

_How simple everything was, before I told him I loved him._

_How beautiful, how clean._

_Wash me of my sins, sun._

_Burn them away._

_I have wronged._

_Let me be free._

_..._

Aerrow stands on the pier, watching Piper slide about the ice, oblivious to his presence. Her sleek little frame and deep blue hair, the only specks of color visible, move around with perfect grace.

She skates, swims, dances, prances--

TRIPS.

"Piper!"

He jumps onto the ice, forgetting that it _just might crack_, and bounds towards her, arms outstretched. Just as her head is about to hit the frozen ground--

"Gotcha."

She blinks a few times. The sun is in her eyes. She sees jagged hair and feels sturdy hands.

"...you?" she rasps.

Then her vision focuses and she sees who it really is.

"Hey," he says, lifting her up. "You alright?"

She nods.

He smirks and lets go of her waist. "You look like you're kind of...out of it."

"I'm fine."

He sighs and his eyes cloud over.

"Were you expecting someone else?"

"No," she snaps, a little too fast.

He inches closer. His breath encircles her neck. _Kiss him_, her brain whispers. _Kiss him. Thank him._

She waits for her heart to say otherwise, then realizes it is not there.

She turns and presses her lips to his.

Out on the ice, Piper makes yet another betrayal.

...

Night. It is night. The moon is looking for its reflection in the water, but sees only a smudged up figure below. A sheet of ice.

Someone is standing in the snow, shuddering as she stares out across the frozen lake.

She begs for redemption and the arms of a lover.

...

God is not fair.

Life is not fair.

The World is not fair.

...

_3. Roses_

"Got it? Got it? Good."

Junko nodded and rattled the little packet they had found. A small rustling came from within, sorta like those bean-bags they used to play with back on his terra. Meanwhile, Stork was peering through the frosted glass of a very heavy looking helmet. ("That packet is _unlabeled_. We have no idea what could be in there. It could be Venus Fly Trap seeds, for all we know." "Does that mean it'd eat Finn again?" "Yes." "Oh. And that's bad, right?" "...I feel like I should say yes but can't.")

There was a pot of frozen soil from outside, a heat lamp from Stork's desk, and a small glass of melted snow, which swirled around in its container, still not used to being trapped.

"Ready?"

"Yep."

The packet was ripped open and the seeds patted into the soil.

The Rubicon was passed.

Stork turned on the heat lamp, Junko poured the water, and both of them waited.

"See anything?"

"...No."

...

Everyone is always striving for a purpose. We always need to know the reason we were placed on Earth, be it murder or ressurection, loving or hating. Perhaps that is what seperates us from ants. There is more to humans than finding food and water, reproducing to bring forth a new generation.

Some people know what they are meant to do from day one.

Others never truly understand themselves, and are caught in limbo for eternity.

_We are meant to do more than just take up space._

_We are._

_We are, we are, we are._

_..._

When night fell, there was a fearful swallow of pride.

He was absolutely frozen. There was no shelter, there was no heat. He could barely make a fire to keep himself warm.

What was he supposed to do for food and clothing, kill a bear?

He wasn't about to go all "pioneer."

The ship cast a gray silhouette on the untouched snow. He walked across it, breaking the thin and icy surface, towards the ramp. His fist was raised and ready to knock.

Then he saw something, sitting near the door. Soft and waiting, warm and poised.

For him.

...

Right after dinner, which consisted of canned beans, Piper stared out into the expanse and watched.

_I know he's still out there. He's cold. He's hungry._

_What's he gonna do, kill a bear?_

She got together a few cans of extra food and looked around for something to serve as a blanket.

The parachutes would have to do.

Tossed everything from the hanger into a neat pile near the door, sitting in the snow like some kind of semi-functional ice boat.

Then went to bed, feeling slightly better than usual.

...

"Has anything happened to it yet?!" Junko's persistent bellows resounded through the ship, shocking the other occupants silly. Stork pried the bloom-less pot from the Wallop's massive digits, before setting it carefully back onto Junko's desk.

"Eh-heh, Junko...Maybe we should keep the pot in _my _room. It's got better...light."

"But you blacked out all the windows!"

"_Junko!_"

"Okay, okay. Your room."

...

In the morning light, the Dark Ace took a good look at the blanket he'd wrapped around himself the other night. The Storm Hawks' bright blue insignia stood out against the rest of the fabric.

Oh, the irony.

The chipped and fading raven on his chest was not pleased.

Yet, sides didn't matter here.

He was in No Man's Land, and there was no escape.

...

Ice is branching out across the glass, fragile arms seeking out refuge. How desperately it wants to become water, how achingly pained it is! Shrieking, crying.

The sun doesn't seem to care.

There must be a God, somewhere, who is dictating every movement in the universe. Some master puppeteer.

The strings are slowly fraying, however.

Someday we'll reach up and cut ourselves loose.

...

Her hands were wrapped loosely around his. She was asleep and he was watching her do so.

Breathing soft and quiet, even, rhythmic. He brushes a lock of blue hair from her face and sighs, his breath tangling with hers, drifting solemnly through her eyelashes and twisting to land on her lips. He loves her. He knows he loves her. He cannot be just _selfish_; he is not _selfish_. He is honorable. He is good. He has tangled her heart in his fingers and is quietly nursing it back ot life.

He loves her so much, it has turned his insides into sharp razors, into a weight pulling consistently on the bottom of his heart.

Aerrow rises and casts one final look out the window. As he turns, he gets an uncomfortable feeling of having left something important behind.

...

Parachute silk warms his skin. The fire is slowly beginning to melt the surrounding ice.

Something in the forest moves swiftly, brushing across the undergrowth.

The Dark Ace stands, reaching behind himself to grab the rusty handle of his sword. Corroded by lake water and dew and melting winter.

But its still sharp.

From the brush comes a flash of red and it stares him in the face, sly golden eyes cutting into his red ones. It is leering, bushy winter coat a splotch of deadened blood splattered across the snow. Yellowed canines sparkle with saliva.

_Nothing is forever._

Somehow, the Dark Ace refuses to accept the message. He smiles back and sets the sword down.

_"You want me?" _he bellows. _"Come and __**GET ME.**__"_

The fox dances in place a little longer. The Dark Ace starts to feel uncomfortable in his own feather-light skin.

_Maybe later._

And then its gone.

Over the rise to wherever spirits rest when their duty is done.

...

"Nothing is forever, eh?"

The fire crackles in agreement.

He laughs.

...

Stork has peeled the paper from his windows, sun-bleached and more brown than black. Fraying at the edges.

Pure and white sunlight comes through, stroking the soil. Enticing something to grow.

Faint sprinkles of water are placed lovingly on the seeds, which sleep quietly, waiting to be born.

Winter, the Merb realizes, is just waiting.

Waiting for spring, for golden sun, for color.

...

_4. Hide and Seek_

Peeking over the horizon, here come the stars.

...

_5. Revelation_

Maybe its not so bad here after all.

* * *

The fox strikes again, mua-ha-ha-ha-ha! Happy spring break.


End file.
